An armed drone of the Turkish state shelled the village of Merenaz in the Shera district of the occupied Afrin Canton.

Further details about the attack were not immediately available.

On August 23, a Turkish drone in Syria’s Kurdish-controlled northeast hit a car belonging to the all-female broadcaster JIN TV, killing worker Najm el-Din Faisal Haj Sinan and wounding journalist Dalila Agid.

Turkish drones move unchallenged in the airspace over Syria controlled by the USA and Russia. In the last three years, Turkey has carried out around 200 attacks by unmanned aircraft in the autonomous region of northern and eastern Syria. From Derik to Shehba, there was hardly a place that was not bombed by armed drones. The attacks targeted representatives of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), members of combat units as well as the civilian population and claimed well over a hundred lives. In addition, at least 46 members of the Syrian government forces were killed by the Turkish army in attacks on their bases in AANES.

In a balance sheet of the crimes and violations committed by the Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries against the regions of North-East Syria during July 2023, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) reported on 10 August that the Turkish occupation army persistently violates the airspace of NE Syria, utilizing warplanes and UAVs to target both civilian and military locations, including cars on public roads. “These attacks have resulted in the loss of lives among our fighters and civilians. The warplane violations alone have reached 58, while the drones targeted areas 10 times, with 7 of those attacks conducted by the Turkish occupation army and 3 by its mercenaries. Disturbingly, the use of suicide drones in these attacks has been reported.”