Turkish authorities reported on 21 November that the US-backed Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) fired five rockets from Northern Syria, killing three people and wounding six others.

The rockets are said to have hit two houses, a school, and a truck in the Karkamis district, near a border gate in Gaziantep province.

A news reporter from CNN Turk claims the rockets were fired from the Kobani area of Syria, controlled by the YPG, the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

This comes a day after Turkish warplanes carried out air strikes on the Kurdish region of Syria and Iraq, destroying 89 of its targets.

Turkey frequently carries out cross-border airstrikes via armed drones in neighboring Iraq and Syria as part of its offensive against Kurdish militants, whom Ankara considers “terrorists” and a threat to its national stability.

The Turkish Defense Ministry claims the operation was in retaliation to the terror attack in central Istanbul on 13 November, which killed six people and injured dozens, and for which Ankara holds Kurdish militants responsible.

Turkey’s Interior Minister Suleiman Soylu said in a statement in parliament on 18 November that the PKK was an arm of US intelligence and reiterated his earlier comments by denouncing Washington for its support for the Kurdish militia.

Soylu added that in the past three years, the US Senate provided $2 billion in aid to the PKK.

Ankara has accused Washington and its European allies before, arguing their western allies supplied weapons and training to the PKK in northern Syria.

European support for Kurdish militants is the center of an ongoing dispute between Turkey and the Scandinavian nations, Sweden and Finland, whose efforts to join NATO are hindered by their alleged support for Kurdish militias.

Since the Istanbul bombing, Ankara has responded swiftly, charging at least 17 in connection to the attack and intensifying its anti-Kurdish operations in Iraq.

On 2 October, Turkey announced that it had “neutralized” 30 members of the PKK in a cross-border operation in Iraq and Syria, using airstrikes.

A high-ranking Turkish officer was also killed in an attack on 2 October, with Ankara attributing the attack to the PKK.