Eleven people were killed today in a Turkish raid on regime positions in northern Syria following nighttime clashes between Ankara forces and Kurdish militants, the NGO said.

“Eleven militants were killed in a Turkish airstrike on Syrian regime positions (…) near the border with Turkey,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

“We don’t know if they are all regime forces or Kurdish fighters who control the zone,” said the director of the observatory, Rami Abdelrahman.

According to the same source, an airstrike was carried out against the position of the regime forces in the village of Tsarkali, west of the border town of Kobani.

In recent years, regime forces have been deployed to areas controlled by Kurdish forces near the border with Turkey as part of deals aimed at deterring Ankara’s cross-border attacks against Kurdish fighters it considers “terrorists.”

Violent clashes erupted overnight between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by Kurdish fighters, and Turkish forces, which stepped up their shelling of Kurdish positions after attacking one of their positions on the Turkish side of the border, the Observatory said.

The conflict in Syria, which began in 2011, has become more complicated after the intervention of various organizations and foreign powers. It is estimated that this resulted in the death of half a million people, the creation of millions of displaced persons and refugees and the fragmentation of the country.