The Kurdish news media widely hailed her as a suicide attacker and described her being wrapped in bombs when confronting the Turkish tank. The pro-Kurdish Firat news agency said Ms. Hemo had “infiltrated behind the enemy lines and detonated bombs wrapped around her body near a Turkish tank in Hemame village in Afrin.”

Photo

Zuluh Hemo in a photo released by the Women’s Protection
Units of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

A Facebook post showed images of her and a video of her singing.

A spokesman for the United States-led military coalition in Syria and Iraq, Col. Ryan Dillon, said that American forces were not operating in the Afrin area and that he could not confirm nor comment on reports of a Kurdish suicide attack.

The Turkish military offensive against Kurdish militias in the Afrin area of northern Syria has put Turkey and the United States in the tense position of fighting with and against the same ally: the Kurdish Popular Protection Units, known by their acronym Y.P.G., along with their female component, the Y.P.J.

Both are the dominant units in the Syrian Democratic Forces, which, with United States support, has largely defeated the Islamic State militants in eastern Syria, forcing them from their major strongholds of Raqqa and Deir al-Zour last year.

The Turks launched an offensive in the Afrin area against the Kurds more than a week ago — including warplane bombings — leading to protests from American officials, including Secretary State Rex W. Tillerson and President Trump. The fighting has continued all week.

According to the Syrian Observatory, 66 people died in the fighting on Saturday, including seven Turkish soldiers. Among the dead, the Observatory said, were 13 children and seven women.

Afrin is well west of the area where United States forces are operating in cooperation with the Kurds, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has threatened to advance into areas to the east, where the Americans also operate.

Turkey, which has a large and restive Kurdish minority, is concerned that the Syrian Democratic Forces have carved out an autonomous semi-state in northeastern Syria that could pose a threat to its security.

Women are a major component of the Kurdish militias in northern Syria, fighting under their own flag and with independent, female commanders. The Y.P.J.’s statement about Ms. Hemo’s attack compared her to Arin Mirkan, a suicide bomber who had attacked the Islamic State in the northern Syrian city of Kobani.

The statement, issued by the Y.P.J.’s general command, praised its suicide attackers and said: “We will resist the Turkish occupation, which represents the historic enemy of our people until the last drop of our blood. Afrin will be a cemetery for fascism.”

The Y.P.J. said that Ms. Hemo joined the militia in 2014, when she would have been about 17, and that she was from a village near Afrin.

On Sunday, fighting continued in the Afrin area. Turkey’s official Anadolu News Agency quoted the Turkish Army as saying that it had “neutralized 37 Daesh and P.K.K. terrorists” in airstrikes that day.

The Turks refer to Syrian Kurdish militias by the initials of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, P.K.K. — separatists who are closely allied with the Syrian Kurds — and falsely accuse the Kurds of having an alliance with the Islamic State, also known by its Arabic acronym, Daesh.