At least 23 Kurdish fighters were reported to have been killed, a monitoring group said.

American military and national security officials said that by allowing the attack on the Kurdish fighters, who did the heavy lifting in the fight against the Islamic State, the U.S. risks repeating a scenario that helped pave the way for the Iraq war.

ISIS: The American military is working to remove as many as several dozen Islamic State detainees from Kurdish-run prisons in Syria, including two British men now in custody who tortured and killed Western hostages.

Fact check: President Trump, under sharp bipartisan criticism, defended his decision to allow the Turkish offensive, saying that the Kurds had allied with the U.S. only out of self-interest. “As somebody wrote in a very, very powerful article today, they didn’t help us in the Second World War,” he added. However, there is evidence that some Kurds fought for the Allies.