Turkey warned today it would carry out more strikes on a Syrian Kurdish militia if it failed to retreat beyond the Euphrates River, as Washington condemned their weekend clashes as "unacceptable".
Turkish forces pressed on with a two-pronged operation inside Syria against Islamic State (IS) jihadists and the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), shelling over a dozen targets.
But strikes against the YPG are hugely sensitive as the Kurdish group - seen as a terror group by Ankara - is allied with Turkey's NATO partner, the United States, in the fight against IS in Syria.
Ankara said it had killed 25 Kurdish "terrorists" in strikes on YPG positions yesterday, a day after a Turkish soldier died in a rocket attack allegedly by the militia.
The Pentagon called the clashes "unacceptable" and urged an immediate de-escalation.
Turkey's operation aims to push the YPG back across the Euphrates River to prevent it joining up the region east of the river already under its control with a Kurdish-held area to the west.
US Vice President Joe Biden, visiting Ankara last week, said Washington had told the YPG to go back across the Euphrates or risk losing American support. But Ankara says it had seen no evidence of this.
"The YPG... Needs to cross east of the Euphrates as soon as possible. So long as they don't, they will be a target," said Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.
"In the places where it has moved, the YPG forces everyone out - including Kurds - who do not think like it does and carries out ethnic cleansing," he added.
Cavusoglu said the ethnic composition of the area around the city of Manbij west of the Euphrates - captured by the YPG from IS earlier this month - was largely Arab.
He said those who had lived in the area before fighting broke out should return rather than new Kurdish migrants.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 40 civilians were killed in Turkish shelling and air strikes today, claims strongly rejected by Ankara.
"Allegations that... Civilians were shot at or targeted do not reflect the truth," the Turkish premier's office said, adding the army was taking "all necessary measures to prevent any harm to the civilian population".
It said 13 villages had "been cleared of terrorist elements" and were now controlled by anti-regime Syrian fighters that Ankara refers to as the Free Syrian Army (FSA).
Ankara-backed forces captured the IS border stronghold of Jarabulus last week, facing seemingly little resistance from the jihadists who fled to bases further south.
But the standoff with the Kurdish militia has been intense, with a Turkish soldier killed on Saturday in a YPG rocket attack on his tank.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said Washington was monitoring the reports of air strikes and clashes and found such fighting - in an area clear of IS - "unacceptable and a source of deep concern".
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