U.S. troops in Syria “came under artillery fire from Turkish positions” on Friday, the Pentagon announced. In a statement, Navy Capt. Brook DeWalt said that American troops in Kobani came under fire at around 9 p.m. local time on Friday. “The explosion occurred within a few hundred meters of a location outside the Security Mechanism zone and in an area known by the Turks to have U.S. forces present,” DeWalt said. No American injuries were reported in early reports of the incident.
Turkey disputed the Pentagon's account, saying it “did not open fire at the U.S. observation post in any way” and took “all precautions” prior to opening fire in order to “prevent any harm to the U.S. base.” The country also claimed it stopped firing after receiving information from the U.S. “We firmly reject the claim that U.S. or Coalition forces were fired upon,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement. The U.S. previously announced that it had given Turkey “explicit grid coordinate detail” of their locations in Syria, prompting some officials to deem the firing intentional.
“Turkey knows all of our locations down to the precise grid coordinate... This was not a mistake,” Brett McGurk, the former presidential envoy to the global coalition to counter ISIS, tweeted.
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