US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the Kurdish rebel PKK, who have waged a decades-long insurgency against Ankara, were "probably" a bigger terror threat than the Islamic State group.
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"The PKK, which is a part of the Kurds, as you know, is probably worse at terror and more of a terrorist threat in many ways than ISIS," Trump told a news conference at the White House.
In the first week of the Turkish assault on northern Syria, at least 154 fighters from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have been killed, as well as 128 fighters from Turkish-backed Syrian factions, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitor of the war. It said at least 69 civilians have been killed in Syria.
Marginalised for decades, Syria's minority Kurds carved out a de facto autonomous region across some 30 percent of the nation's territory after the devastating war broke out in 2011.
Tens of thousands have died since the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984. The PKK is considered a terror group by Ankara, the United States and the European Union.
Under fire for abandoning America's Kurdish allies in the anti-IS fight to face a Turkish assault in northern Syria, Trump disparaged the Kurds earlier Wednesday saying they "are not angels".
-Inputs from PTI