US envoy visits Kurds in Syria amid Turkey tensions

Washington dispatched a top envoy to meet with allied Kurdish forces inside Syria last week, a State Department official said Monday, following tensions after Turkey began operations in the war-torn country. Washington found itself trapped between two key allies who are bitter foes -- NATO partner Turkey, and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, also taking part in the war against the Islamic State jihadist group but considered a "terrorist" group by Ankara. A State Department spokesman told AFP that Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy to the US-led coalition fighting IS, met with forces from the Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces alliance.