On Tuesday, the top commander of the SDF, Mazloum Abdi, told reporters that the group’s joint operations alongside the U.S.-led international coalition to counter the Islamic State group had been “temporarily paused” because of recent Turkish airstrikes.

 

U.S. officials had said the patrols that resumed Saturday are not to counter IS militants but will be limited to areas around a sprawling camp housing tens of thousands of mostly women and children linked to IS as well as prisons where the SDF is holding thousands of extremists.

 

Turkey has launched a barrage of airstrikes on suspected militant targets in northern Syria and Iraq in recent days, in retaliation for a deadly Nov. 13 bombing in Istanbul that Ankara blames on the Kurdish groups. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also threatened a ground incursion, without specifying when it would be launched.