A Turkish diplomatic source said his country never used chemical weapons in its operations in Syria, and takes the utmost care of civilians, after Syrian Kurdish forces and a monitoring group accused it of carrying out a gas attack in Syria’s Afrin region. “These are baseless accusations. Turkey never used chemical weapons. We take utmost care about civilians in Operation Olive Branch,” a source told Reuters. The source also described the accusations of wounding six civilians through a suspected gas attack as “black propaganda”. A spokesman for the Kurdish "YPG" in Afrin stated that Turkish bombardment hit a village in the northwest of the region, near the Turkish border. He added that it caused six people to suffer breathing problems and other symptoms indicative of a gas attack. Turkey launched an air and ground offensive last month on the Afrin region, opening a new front in the multi-sided Syrian war, to target Kurdish fighters in northern Syria. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights pointed out that Turkish forces and their Syrian rebels allies hit the village on Friday with shells. Also, medical sources in Afrin reported that six people in the attack suffered breathing difficulties and dilated pupils, indicating a suspected gas attack. Since the onset of the conflict in 2011, the YPG and its allies have set up three autonomous cantons in the north, including Afrin. Their sphere of influence expanded as they seized territory from ISIS with US help, though Washington opposes their autonomy plans as does the Syrian regime. US support for Kurdish-led forces in Syria has infuriated Ankara, which views them as a security threat along its frontier, and sees the YPG as terrorists and an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has waged a three-decade insurgency on Turkish soil.