Syria's Kurds vowed to fight to retake the Kurdish enclave of Afrin after Turkey-led fighters on Sunday seized control of its main city two months into a offensive.
"Resistance... will continue until every inch of Afrin is liberated and the people of Afrin return to their villages and homes," authorities in the semi-autonomous canton of Afrin said in a statement.Turkish forces and alllied Syrian rebels on January 20 launched an operation against the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia in the enclave.
As of Sunday afternoon, the whole of the Afrin enclave was in the hands of Turkey-led forces, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor that relies on sources on the ground for its information.
"In all of Afrin's sectors, our forces will become a permanent nightmare" for pro-Ankara forces, the statement said.
"Our war against the Turkish occupation... has entered a new phase: a switch from direct confrontation to hit-and-run attacks," it said.
Turkey considers the YPG to be "terrorists", but the Kurdish militia has also been a key US ally in the fight against the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria.