TURKISH President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed today to expand his army’s assault on Syrian Kurds eastwards towards the border with Iraq.

Mr Erdogan said his troops would advance at least as far as Manbij, 60 miles east of Afrin, their current focus.

Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch is targeting the Kurdish YPG militia in Afrin canton, with the aid of so-called Free Syrian Army gunmen.

Mr Erdogan, whose government has waged a bloody war on Turkey’s own Kurdish minority for years, said that the invaders would push on towards Iraq “until no terrorist is left.”

Turkey’s government habitually applies the label “terrorist” to all Kurdish people and has jailed several MPs who have criticised the anti-Kurdish crackdown within its own borders as “supporters of terrorism.”

“We will clear Manbij of terrorists … No-one should be disturbed by this because the real owners of Manbij are not these terrorists, they are our Arab brothers,” Mr Erdogan raved.

Manbij — like much of northern Syria, an ethnically diverse city — is currently controlled by the YPG as part of the Syrian Kurds’ self-proclaimed Rojava region.

“From Manbij, we will continue our struggle up to the border with Iraq, until no terrorist is left,” said Mr Erdogan.

The Syrian-Iraqi border is about 200 miles east of Manbij, though all of Kurdish-controlled northern Syria runs along the border with Turkey.

Mr Erdogan also repeated his denunciations of United States support for the YPG.

YPG sources said the first week of Turkey’s invasion of Afrin had killed more than 100 civilians and fighters. Ankara said three of its soldiers and 11 allied Syrian insurgents had been killed.

nHundreds of Kurdish people rallied outside Turkey’s embassy in Lebanon today to condemn the aggression. Beirut police put up barbed wire to keep them away.