Video Turkish artillery hits Kurdish YPG targets in Syria's Afrin

Turkey continued to shell targets in the Afrin district in northwest Syria on Tuesday (January 23) and dispatched convoys of soldiers and tanks into the region as Ankara pressed on with its campaign to crush Kurdish YPG control over the area.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who says the YPG is an extension of a Kurdish group waging a decades-long insurgency inside Turkey's borders, has also pledged to drive Kurdish fighters out of the mainly Arab town of Manbij.

While the United States does not have forces in the area of Afrin, where the offensive is focused, it does in Manbij to the east, raising the possibility of conflict between forces allied with Turkey and the United States.

The U.S. hopes to use the YPG's control in northern Syria to give it the diplomatic muscle it needs to revive U.N.-led talks in Geneva on a deal that would end Syria's civil war.

Ankara has been infuriated by U.S. support for the YPG, which it sees as a domestic security threat, one of several issues that have brought relations between the NATO allies close to breaking point.