The United States has begun building two bases in the Manbij area and has sent military aid to the Syrian city, which is under attack by Turkey to oust Kurdish militants.
The Turkish news agency Anadolu, citing "reliable local sources", said the two military bases would be built near the village of Dadat, north of Manbij. They will be located in the south and southeast of this village, in places where today there are already two small observatories.
Anadolu also reported that the United States on Sunday sent 300 troops to the Manbij area, where the Americans have deployed alongside Kurdish fighters from the People's Protection Units (YPG).
Manbij, a former jihadist stronghold in Syria, was liberated in 2016 by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Islamic State-backed coalition backed by the United States and other Western countries. The city, about 100km from the border with Turkey, is in danger of becoming a war zone again as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to launch an operation to oust the YPG, a so-called "terrorist" organization. From Ankara.
In July 2017, Anadolu aired a report accompanied by a graph listing the positions of the 10 US military installations in Syria. In fact, in some cases he mentioned the number of men of the special forces that were there. The Pentagon reacted strongly to the disclosure of this information and the Turkish authorities denied any involvement in the case. Last Friday, the agency reported in another article that about 100 members of the French special forces had been deployed to five "military bases" in Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Syria. A spokesman for France's general staff declined to comment on the case.