At a news briefing, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the U.S. wanted Turkey to abstain from violence in the northwestern city of Afrin.

According to Hurriyet daily Nauert said: “We would call [...] on the Turks to not take any actions of that sort.”

“We don’t want them to engage in violence but we want them to keep focused on ISIS,” she said, using another acronym for IS.

On Jan. 14, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Turkish army will launch a military operation into Afrin, a region bordering Turkey’s Hatay and Kilis provinces controlled by the People’s Protection Units (YPG).

Erdogan said the Afrin operation would be an extension of the seven-month Operation Euphrates Shield in northern Syria, which ended in March 17 and aimed to fight against IS and curb the YPG in the area.

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