ANKARA/BEIRUT (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that Turkey will “clean” its entire border with Syria in a sign that the Turkish offensive on the Syrian Kurdish YPG group in northern Syria’s Afrin region could be extended further. The town is controlled by the US-backed Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which is considered to be affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), designated as a terrorist group by Turkey and several other countries. ANKARA (Reuters) - The United States has told Turkey it will not provide any more weapons to the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, the Turkish presidency said on Saturday, as Turkey’s offensive against the U.S.-backed YPG in Syria entered its eighth day. Erdogan said this week that Turkish forces would sweep Kurdish fighters from the length of Syrian border and could push all the way east to the frontier with Iraq, a move that would risk a possible confrontation with U.S. forces allied to the Kurds. Any Turkish advance towards Manbij could threaten U.S. efforts to stabilise northern Syria, where the United States has about 2,000 troops, officially as part of the international coalition against Islamic State. A senior official for the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Syrian fighters spearheaded by the Kurdish YPG, said any wider Turkish assault would face an "appropriate response". Sunday's battles "are very fierce on Barsaya ... which is strategic because it overlooks Azaz on the Syrian side and Kilis on the Turkish side", Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
According to the Turkish presidency, United States National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster said January 26 that the U.S. "will not provide any more weapons to the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia".