By ELENA BECATOROS and SARAH EL DEEB

CEYLANPINAR, Turkey (AP) — The Kurdish-led administration in northern Syria accused Turkey on Friday of violating a U.S.-brokered cease-fire that went into effect overnight, as fighters from both sides clashed in and around a border town that has been one of the fiercest fronts in the Turkish invasion.

The town of Ras al-Ayn was emerging as an immediate test for the five-day cease-fire agreed on by Washington and Ankara. Before the deal’s announcement, Turkish-backed forces had encircled the town and were battling fierce resistance from Kurdish fighters inside.

The Syrian Kurds raised further uncertainty over a cease-fire deal that already was vague on key points and left significant questions unanswered. The self-rule administration said some provisions of the cease-fire deal “need further discussion with the United States.”

It did not specify which provisions, but the Kurds have not publicly committed to a central term of the deal — a pullout of their fighters from the border region. A spokesman for the Kurdish-led fighters said Friday they were not withdrawing from Ras al-Ayn because Turkish forces are still besieging and shelling it.

Criticism of the cease-fire deal — which President Donald Trump called “a great day for civilization” — mounted. EU Council President Donald Tusk said it was “not a cease-fire, it is a demand for the capitulation of the Kurds” and called on Turkey to immediately halt its operation in northeast Syria. French President Emmanuel Macron called the Turkish operation “madness.”

Turkish shelling hit in and around Ras al-Ayn on Friday morning, raising columns of smoke, seen by an Associated Press journalist in Ceylanpinar on the Turkish side of the border, but none was seen after 10:30 a.m., and only sporadic gunfire was heard from inside the town.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Rojava Information Center said fighting continued into the afternoon as Turkish-backed Syrian fighters clashed with Kurdish forces in villages on the outskirts of Ras al-Ayn. The Kurdish-led force said five of its fighters were killed and a number of civilians wounded in a Turkish airstrike on one of the villages.

Other activists reported a new exodus of civilians from the villages. Gun battles and shelling continued around a hospital in the center of Ras al-Ayn, and those injured inside could not be evacuated, said Mustafa Bali, spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. The Kurdish Red Crescent said it was unable to enter the town to evacuate the wounded because of fighting.

Kurdish fighters said the fighting quieted around 4 p.m.

In its statement, the Kurdish-led administration said Turkey “has not adhered with the cease-fire until now in some areas,” particularly in Ras al-Ayn.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denied any fighting took place Friday and said Kurdish fighters had begun withdrawing, a claim the Kurds denied.

A senior U.S. official said they were awaiting confirmation on the reported fighting. The official said it takes time for information to filter down to field units especially for forces without strong command and control. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The cease-fire agreement — reached after hours of negotiations in Turkey’s capital between Erdogan and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence — requires the Kurdish fighters to vacate a swath of territory in Syria along the Turkish border. That arrangement would largely solidify the position Turkey has gained after days of fighting. The Turks and the Kurds appear to disagree on the size of the area covered by the cease-fire. Turkey calls it a “pause” not a cease-fire.

It remains unclear if the Kurdish-led force was on board with pulling back even if a pause in fighting firmly takes hold.

Pence said the U.S. was already coordinating with it on a withdrawal. But American sway with the group has diminished after Trump turned his back on it by withdrawing U.S. soldiers from northeast Syria, opening the way for Turkey to launch its invasion 10 days ago.

The Kurdish-led force’s commander, Mazloum Abdi, said Thursday night that it would abide by the cease-fire and “do our best to make it successful.” He did not mention any withdrawal.

Asked about a withdrawal, a force spokesman, Mervan, said “so far there is nothing,” pointing to the continuing siege of Ras al-Ayn. “It seems that under this deal they want to commit more massacres,” he said. He uses a nom de guerre in accordance with the group’s regulations.

A member of the Syrian Kurdish force ruled out any pull-back from border towns, calling the U.S. deal with Turkey an “insult” and saying “no way this will work.”

“They think we will just leave our land and our people to Turks if we are asked,” he said. “They can come and take the land by force. Nobody should expect us to leave our land.”

“How does the U.S. think to enforce a deal without presence on the ground?” he added, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

Elsewhere, no fighting was heard Friday along the stretch of the border that has been the main theater of the Turkish assault, running from Ras al-Ayn about 125 kilometers (75 miles) west to the Turkish-held town of Tal Abyad. Kurdish fighters have already been driven out of much, but not all, of that territory.

Trump framed the U.S. cease-fire deal with Turkey as “a great day for civilization,” but it aims to patch up a foreign policy crisis widely seen to be of his own making.

Turkish troops and their allied Syrian fighters launched the offensive two days after Trump suddenly announced he was withdrawing American troops from the border area. The Kurdish-led forces have since invited the Syrian government’s military, backed by Russia, to deploy there to protect them from Turkey. Syrian troops have already rolled into several key points along the border.

The Kurds were U.S. allies in the fight against the Islamic State since 2014, but Turkey considers the Kurdish fighters terrorists because of their links to outlawed Kurdish rebels fighting inside Turkey since the 1980s. Turkey has said its security depends on clearing them out of a border “safe zone.”

Turkey’s pro-government dominated media hailed the cease-fire agreement as a clear win for Erdogan. “Great Victory” read Yeni Safak’s banner headline. “Turkey got everything it wanted.” Sabah newspaper headlined: “We won both on the field and on the (negotiating) table.”

____

El Deeb reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara and Mehmet Guzel in Ceylanpinar contributed.

By BRIAN WITTE and REGINA GARCIA CANO

BALTIMORE (AP) — Maryland Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, a sharecropper’s son who rose to become a civil rights champion and the chairman of one of the U.S. House committees leading an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, died Thursday of complications from longstanding health problems. He was 68.

Cummings was a formidable orator who advocated for the poor in his black-majority district , which encompasses a large portion of Baltimore and more well-to-do suburbs.

As chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Cummings led investigations of the president’s governmental dealings, including probes in 2019 relating to Trump’s family members serving in the White House.

Cummings replied that government officials must stop making “hateful, incendiary comments” that distract the nation from its real problems, including mass shootings and white supremacy.

“Those in the highest levels of the government must stop invoking fear, using racist language and encouraging reprehensible behavior,” Cummings said.

On Thursday morning, Trump tweeted his “condolences to the family and many friends of Congressman Elijah Cummings. I got to see first hand the strength, passion and wisdom of this highly respected political leader.” The brief tweet made no reference to past feuds.

Cummings’ long career spanned decades in Maryland politics. He rose through the ranks of the Maryland House of Delegates before winning his congressional seat in a special election in 1996 to replace former Rep. Kweisi Mfume, who left the seat to lead the NAACP.

Cummings was an early supporter of Barack Obama’s presidential bid in 2008. By 2016, Cummings was the senior Democrat on the House Benghazi Committee, which he said was “nothing more than a taxpayer-funded effort to bring harm to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”

Throughout his career, Cummings used his fiery voice to highlight the struggles and needs of inner-city residents. He believed in much-debated approaches to help the poor and addicted, such as needle-exchange programs as a way to reduce the spread of AIDS.

A key figure in the Trump impeachment inquiry , Cummings had been hoping to return to Congress after a medical procedure he said would only keep him away for a week. His statement then didn’t detail the procedure. He’d previously been treated for heart and knee issues.

Cummings’ committee, authorized to investigate virtually any part of the federal government, is one of three conducting the House impeachment probe of Trump. Cummings was among the three chairmen to sign a letter seeking documents into the formal inquiry into whether Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate the family of Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden, the former vice president. The committees have issued subpoenas of witnesses in the face of the Trump administration’s refusal to cooperate with the impeachment probe and have jointly been meeting behind closed doors to hear testimony.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a veteran House Democrat from New York, will for now take over leadership of the House oversight committee, according to a senior Democratic leadership aide who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person wasn’t authorized to discuss the decision publicly.

Separately, Cummings led an effort to gain access to Trump’s financial records. His committee subpoenaed records from Mazars USA, an accounting firm that has provided services to Trump. The panel demanded documents from 2011 to 2018 as it probed Trump’s reporting of his finances and potential conflicts of interest. Last week, a federal appeals court ruled the records must be turned over to the House.

Shortly after Cummings’ death, which his office said happened after 2 a.m. at Johns Hopkins Hospital, his constituents began mourning. Baltimore mayor Bernard “Jack” Young said in a statement that Cummings “wasn’t afraid to use his considerable intellect, booming voice and poetic oratory to speak out against brutal dictators bent on oppression, unscrupulous business executives who took advantage of unsuspecting customers, or even a U.S. President.”

His widow, Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, chairwoman of Maryland’s Democratic Party, said in a statement: “He worked until his last breath because he believed our democracy was the highest and best expression of our collective humanity and that our nation’s diversity was our promise, not our problem.”

Cummings was born Jan. 18, 1951. In grade school, a counselor told Cummings he was too slow to learn and spoke poorly, and would never fulfill his dream of becoming a lawyer.

It steeled Cummings to prove that counselor wrong. He became not only a lawyer, but one of the most powerful orators in the statehouse, where he entered office in 1983. He rose to become the first black House speaker pro tem. He would begin his comments slowly, developing his theme and raising the emotional heat until it became like a sermon from the pulpit.

Cummings was quick to note the differences between Congress and the Maryland General Assembly, which has long been controlled by Democrats.

“After coming from the state where, basically, you had a lot of people working together, it’s clear that the lines are drawn here,” Cummings said about a month after entering office in Washington in 1996.

Cummings began his long push for civil rights at age 11, when he helped integrate a local swimming pool in Baltimore. This year, during a speech to the American Bar Association in April, Cummings recalled how he and other black children who were barred from the pool organized protests with help from their recreation leader and the NAACP.

Every day for a week, when the children tried to get into the pool, they were spit upon, threatened and called names, Cummings said; he said he was cut by a bottle thrown from an angry crowd.

“The experience transformed my entire life,” he said.

While serving in the Maryland House of Delegates from 1983 to 1996, Cummings pushed for a ban on alcohol and tobacco ads on inner-city billboards in Baltimore, leading to the first such prohibition in a large U.S. city.

Cummings then chaired the Congressional Black Caucus from 2003 to 2004, employing a hard-charging, explore-every-option style to put the group in the national spotlight.

He cruised to big victories in the overwhelmingly Democratic district, which had given Maryland its first black congressman in 1970 when Parren Mitchell was elected.

In 2015, when the death of black Baltimore resident Freddie Gray sparked the worst riots the city had seen in decades, Cummings was in the streets, carrying a bullhorn and urging crowds to go home and respect a curfew. He spoke at Gray’s funeral, asking lawmakers in the church to stand up to show Gray’s mother they would seek justice.

“I want justice, oceans of it. I want fairness, rivers of it. That’s what I want. That’s all I want,” Cummings said, quoting from the Bible.

___

Witte reported from Annapolis. Alan Fram contributed from Washington.

By DAVID KOENIG

DALLAS (AP) — At some point early next year, air travelers will need to decide if they’re willing to take a flight on a Boeing 737 Max.

If they’re not, they’ll need to find out what their travel options are.

There will be no government-ordered compensation in North America or Europe for travelers who are afraid to get on the plane that has crashed twice, killing 346 people. Not after aviation regulators deem the Max safe.

However, airlines are likely to be more flexible in letting passengers change their schedules to avoid flying on a Max, at least for a while.

“We will take care of customers who are not comfortable flying on the Max. We will rebook them,” said American Airlines spokesman Ross Feinstein. The airline won’t charge those passengers the standard $200 fee for changing a ticket, he said.

Also, while they will be willing to rebook passengers free of charge for a while, that doesn’t mean that American, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines — the three U.S. carriers that fly the Max — can get you on the next flight. They are under no obligation to find a seat for you on another carrier, or to pay for a hotel room if they don’t have an available seat until the next day.

“If passengers go to the airport and decide not to fly because the flight is going to be operated by a Max, they will not be able to get compensation because it will be their own decision to cancel their trip, it will not be the decision of the airline,” said Chrystel Erotokritou, who tracks compensation for AirHelp, a company that offers to help passengers with airline-service problems.

And if the airline offers to put the customer on a flight three days later, “there isn’t much the passenger can do,” Erotokritou said. “Either they fly with the Max or they cancel their trip, because when the (Max) comes back into service, it will mean that the aviation authorities in the U.S. and the E.U. now consider this aircraft to be perfectly safe.”

It is safe to assume that most airline passengers have no idea what model of plane they are booked on, or whether it is a Boeing, an Airbus, or something else. Even after they board the plane.

American, Southwest and United Airlines, the three U.S. carriers that own Max jets, display the type of plane for every flight on their online schedules.

If that happens, consumer advocates say passengers should talk to the gate agent immediately.

“You should indicate that you’re fearful of this plane and it would be better for everybody if they allow you to take another flight or give you a credit or a refund,” said Paul Hudson, the president of FlyersRights.org, an advocacy group that sprung from protests over long ground delays during which passengers were trapped on planes. “You don’t want a flyer who is panicked and causing problems on the flight.”

Aware of this situation, American and United say they will not use the Max as a last-minute substitute for other planes, although it’s not clear how long they will stick to that policy.

Gary Leff, who writes a popular travel blog called View from the Wing, thinks airlines will have to notify passengers waiting for the plane if a substitution means their flight will use a Max.

“I think there will be announcements — people will know they are getting on a Max, especially in the case of an aircraft substitution,” Leff said. Airline officials, he said, “don’t want customers freaking out after pushback (from the gate) or after takeoff.”

American, Southwest and United said they are still finishing details for the return of the Max and how to communicate with customers. When the time comes, they will stress that the plane will have been certified as safe by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Tony Roach, Southwest’s managing director of customer experience, said the airline will highlight the software upgrades and additional pilot training that will be required before the Max is recertified. United spokesman Frank Benenati said the airline “will be transparent — and communicate in advance — with our customers who are booked to fly on a Max.” Feinstein, the American spokesman, said his airline’s pilots will assure customers that the plane is safe.

Of course, there is one fail-safe strategy for travelers who are determined to avoid the Boeing plane: “If you really want to be absolutely sure, you can fly on an airline that doesn’t have any MAXes,” said Hudson, the passenger advocate.

Delta Air Lines is the largest U.S. carrier that has never used the Max, and its CEO said last week Delta benefitted over the summer from the thousands of Max-related cancellations at Southwest, American and United.

It is still unclear when the Max will fly again. Boeing began working on updating the plane’s flight software shortly after the Oct. 29 crash of a Lion Air jet off the coast of Indonesia. When the plane was grounded after the second crash — an Ethiopian Airlines Max went down near Addis Ababa after takeoff on March 10 — Boeing was optimistic that it could complete the software work in a few weeks.

That work stretched out over three months, then FAA test pilots found another problem in which computers on the plane could fail. Boeing is still working to correct that issue.

___

David Koenig can be reached at http://twitter.com/airlinewriter