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At least 13 people, including two medical staff, have been killed and several wounded in two separate artillery attacks in the northern Syrian town of Afrin controlled by Turkey-backed fighters, activists, and aid the group said on Sunday.

The first attack, according to Aljazeera, struck a residential area, while the second hit a hospital shortly afterwards, civil defence sources told Reuters news agency. Video footage on social media showed casualties amid the ruins of the al-Shifa Hospital, which went out of service after the attack.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the shelling, which reportedly came from areas where Syrian government troops and Kurdish-led fighters are deployed.

The governor of Turkey’s Hatay province, across the border from Afrin, and Turkey’s defence ministry also said the attack killed 13 civilians and injured 27, adding that it involved rocket and artillery shelling of the hospital. The governor’s office blamed the attack on Syrian Kurdish groups.

Members of the Syria Civil Defence (White Helmets) sift through the rubble at al-Shifa hospital following the shelling of the rebel-held city of Afrin in northern Syria [Bakr Al-Kasem/AFP]

Ankara condemned the attack, saying it was launched by the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which forms the backbone of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF said it was not behind the attacks.

Ankara considers the YPG a “terrorist” group linked to Kurdish separatist group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), inside Turkey. The PKK is designated as a “terrorist group” by the United States and the European Union.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at 18. Al Jazeera could not verify the conflicting death toll figures.

“The shelling targeted several areas of the town and hit the hospital,” Syrian Observatory Director Rami Abdurrahman was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

The artillery fire originated from northern Aleppo province “where militia faithful to Iran and the [Syrian] regime is deployed, near the zones run by Kurdish forces”, he added.

The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), an aid group that assists health centres in opposition areas confirmed that the hospital was targeted by two missiles which destroyed the polyclinic department, the emergency and the delivery rooms.

Two of the 13 killed were hospital staff and two were ambulance drivers, said SAMS. Eleven staff were injured.

SAMS said the hospital was one of the largest facilities in northern Syria that offered thousands of medical services each month and its coordinates were shared as part of the United Nations-led deconfliction mechanism.

Afrin was largely cleared of YPG fighters in 2018 through a military operation by Turkey. Ankara now retains a large military presence in the area, deploying thousands of troops.

Turkey should withdraw its troops from Afghanistan under the 2020 deal for the pullout of foreign forces, a Taliban spokesman has said, effectively rejecting Ankara’s proposal to guard and run Kabul’s airport after the United States-led NATO forces depart.

The development raises serious questions for the US, other countries and international organisations with missions in Kabul about how to securely evacuate their personnel from landlocked Afghanistan, should fighting threaten the capital, Reuters news agency reported on Thursday.

It also appeared to dash Ankara’s hopes of using the securing of Kabul airport to help improve ties with Washington – strained by Turkey’s purchase of Russian defence systems – in talks set for Monday between President Joe Biden and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Asked in a text message whether the Taliban rejected Turkey’s proposal to keep forces in Kabul to guard and run the international airport after other foreign troops leave, the Taliban spokesman in Doha responded that they should go as well.

“Turkey was part of NATO forces in the past 20 years, so as such, they should withdraw from Afghanistan on the basis of the agreement we signed with US on 29th Feb 2020,” Suhail Shaheen told Reuters.

“Otherwise, Turkey is a great Islamic country. Afghanistan has had historical relations with it. We hope to have close and good relations with them as a new Islamic government is established in the country in future,” he added.

Reuters reports that the State Department and the Turkish foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment, Reuters said.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke on Thursday with Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar to “discuss bilateral cooperation and regional issues,” the Pentagon said in a statement, which did not specifically mention Afghanistan.

Under the February 2020 deal between the Taliban and the US signed by former President Donald Trump’s administration, all US forces were to be out of Afghanistan by May 1.

But Biden said in April that the pullout would be completed by the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US that prompted the US-led invasion and removal of the Taliban government that sheltered the al-Qaeda group.

Turkish officials say they made the Kabul airport proposal at a NATO meeting in May when the US and its partners agreed to a plan to withdraw their forces by September 11 after 20 years of backing the Afghan government in a war against the Taliban.

With violence raging, many US legislators and current and former officials fear the departure of the foreign forces and stalled peace talks are pushing Afghanistan into an all-out civil war that could return the Taliban to power.

The Pentagon says the US withdrawal is more than 50 percent complete. Turkey, with more than 500 soldiers still in Afghanistan training security forces, now has the largest foreign military contingent there.

Australia closed its embassy last month because of security concerns. The Taliban’s effective rejection of the Turkish plan to secure the airport could prompt other countries to shutter their missions.

The development also poses a quandary for the Biden administration, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken promising as recently as this week at a Congressional hearing to maintain a US diplomatic presence in Kabul.