BEIRUT — More than 200,000 people who fled a Turkey-led offensive on the Kurdish town of Afrin are without shelter or access to food and water in nearby areas, a Syrian Kurdish official from Afrin told Reuters on Monday.

"The people with cars are sleeping in the cars, the people without are sleeping under the trees with their children," Hevi Mustafa, a top member of the Kurdish civil authority in the Afrin area, told Reuters by phone.

Turkish forces backed by Syrian rebel groups swept into Afrin town on Sunday, raising their flag in the town centre and declaring full control after an eight-week campaign to drive out Kurdish YPG fighters. Mustafa said civilians still in Afrin town were facing threats from the Turkey-backed groups.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called on Monday for greater access to the civilian population of Afrin, declaring that the Turkish Red Crescent lacked credibility among the Syrian Kurds after Turkey's military operation.

ICRC President Peter Maurer, speaking on return from a two-week trip to Syria, Iraq and Iran, told reporters in Geneva: "...the credibility of a Turkish Red Crescent working in Afrin with the Kurdish population is close to zero".

The ICRC is helping some of the thousands of displaced civilians who have fled Afrin to villages near Aleppo, but needs regular access to Afrin, where civilians have the right to neutral, impartial aid and the right to leave or stay, he said.

Meanwhile, a Turkish spokesman told reporters in Ankara that Turkish forces will not remain in Syria's Afrin and will leave the region to its "real owners",.

Bekir Bozdag, a deputy prime minister, also told reporters that Turkey had significantly reduced threats to its borders after capturing the town of Afrin. He said Turkey had collected "most" of the weapons given to Kurdish fighters by the United States, after the YPG left weapons behind as they fled the town.

In a related development, at least four people attacked the Turkish embassy in Copenhagen with Molotov cocktails early Monday, police said, causing minor damage to the facade of the building but no injuries.

The perpetrators fled when a police patrol vehicle arrived at the scene, said Copenhagen police official Peter Dahl.

"We are investigating the area and looking for witnesses and CCTV but there are no suspects right now," he told AFP.

The attack took place the day after Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkish-backed Syrian rebels had taken "total control" of the center of Afrin, a Kurdish-majority city in northern Syria.

The Turkish embassy in Copenhagen declined to comment. — Agencies