The Turkish military hit terrorist group PKK's Syrian offshoot YPG targets in Syria's Tal Rifaat region and killed terrorists following a deadly attack on a hospital in the area, security sources said Sunday.

The hospital attack was carried out by YPG/PKK terrorists in Tal Rifaat.

Using Fırtına (Storm) Howitzers, Turkish forces destroyed three so-called headquarters buildings, a shelter, and a position used by terrorists, and killed many terrorists, said the sources on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to the media.

Saturday's YPG/PKK attack on a hospital in opposition-held northwestern Syria killed at least 14 civilian patients and injured more than 32, said officials in southern Turkey.

In a statement, the Governor's Office in Hatay, just across the border, said that grad missile and artillery shells fired by the YPG/PKK from the Assad regime-controlled Tal Rifaat region hit the emergency department of the private Shifa Hospital in the center of the Afrin district.

Afrin was largely cleared of YPG/PKK terrorists in 2018 through Turkey's anti-terror offensive Operation Olive Branch, but the terror group still targets the region to disturb the peace established by the Turkish forces.

The terror group often targets Jarablus, Azaz, Afrin and al-Bab by attacking from adjacent Tal Rifaat and Manbij regions.

The PKK is a designated terrorist organization in the U.S., Turkey and the European Union, and Washington's support for its Syrian affiliate has been a major strain on bilateral relations with Ankara. The U.S. primarily partnered with the YPG in northeastern Syria in its fight against the Daesh terrorist group. While Turkey strongly opposed the YPG's presence in northern Syria. Ankara has long objected to the U.S.' support for the YPG, a group that poses a threat to Turkey and terrorizes local people, destroying their homes and forcing them to flee.

Under the pretext of fighting Daesh, the U.S. has provided military training and given truckloads of military support to the YPG, despite its NATO ally's security concerns. Underlining that one cannot support one terrorist group to defeat another, Turkey conducted its own counterterrorism operations, over the course of which it has managed to remove a significant number of terrorists from the region.

Since 2016, Turkey has launched a trio of successful anti-terror operations across its border in northern Syria to prevent the formation of a terror corridor and to enable the peaceful settlement of residents: Euphrates Shield (2016), Olive Branch (2018), and Peace Spring (2019).