SYRIA: Turkey said Tuesday its army and allied rebels had surrounded the Kurdish city of Afrin in northern Syria, raising the prospect of another devastating siege in the country’s long conflict. With Syria’s war set to enter its eighth year this week, fighting continues on several fronts, including around Afrin and in Eastern Ghouta near Damascus, where dozens of civilians including people with medical conditions were evacuated on Tuesday. While attention in recent weeks has focused on a ferocious regime assault on rebel-held Ghouta, in Syria’s north Turkish forces and allied Syrian rebels have been advancing in their offensive against the Kurdish enclave of Afrin. In a statement Tuesday, the Turkish military said it had completely encircled Afrin city, home to some 350,000 people and defended by a well-armed Syrian Kurdish militia, the People’s Protection Units (YPG). Birusk Hasakeh, a YPG spokesman inside Afrin, denied the city had been totally besieged but said the last route leading out of it was being shelled heavily. “If they do encircle the city, we will be ready for a long fight. We will resist,” he told AFP. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Turkish forces had moved to within firing range of that last access route, which leads to a pair of regime-held towns — essentially encircling Afrin and 90 villages to its west.