The Turkish military said on Friday 71 Kurdish militants from the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia and the allied PKK had been killed in operations in Syria over the past week.

Turkey launched an operation to drive Islamic State away from its border with Syria in August, and has said that it would strike the U.S.-backed YPG if necessary to prevent them seizing territory there.

Turkey has long demanded that the YPG move out of the Syrian town of Manbij to the eastern side of the Euphrates river. Ankara sees the militants as a terrorist group allied to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decades-old insurgency in southeast Turkey.