Six US F-16 fighter jets arrived at an air base in southern Turkey on Sunday to join the US-led coalition fight against Daesh (the so-called) militants, the US military said.
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The deployment marks the first time since an global coalition began bombing IS targets in Iraq and Syria a year ago that US jets will launch strikes from Turkey, following an accord signed with Ankara late last month.
Image: Six F-16 Fighting Falcons from the 31st Fighter Wing accompany approximately 300 personnel and cargo deployed from Aviano Air Base, Italy.
The air offensive against IS continued overnight, with U.S.-led forces conducting 16 air strikes in Iraq and seven in Syria.
The al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front, one of the major rebel groups in Syria, has decided to shift its presence away from the areas covered by Turkish airstrikes in the country because, it said, their missions do not have the same objectives. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said they have withdrawn from two areas and were replaced by members of the Shamia Front, or Levant Front, which is a coalition of several insurgent groups.
US-trained rebels in Syria have defied their Pentagon-funded programme by pledging to fight against Assad regime troops.
A look at a map shows the prospective zone to be a useful plug of a gap in a cordon sanitaire along the norther border of Syria-useful from the U.S. point of view in reducing the ability of radicals from overseas, including from the West, to move into the “caliphate” and go to work for ISIS.
It said the decision to create the IS-free zone was “not a strategic decision… made by the fighting groups, rather its primary goal is Turkey’s national security”.
A U.S. official says that numerous 54 U.S.-trained Syrian rebels are now unaccounted for.
The Assyrian Federation of Sweden, which has followed the case, said Tuesday’s release brings the total number of freed Assyrians to 45.
The Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlüt Çavusoglu, recently said that the country will start a “comprehensive battle” against Islamic State after the arrival of US aircraft and drones.
Some local institutions in opposition-held parts of Syria’s northwestern Aleppo province have begun using the Turkish lira – instead of the Syrian pound – as their chief means of exchange, according to the pro-opposition Local Council of Aleppo City.
It said its fighters would evacuate their positions on the frontline against Islamic State in northern Aleppo province but would continue to fight the jihadist group elsewhere in Syria.
Islamic State fighters then seized the village after heavy clashes with rival groups.
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Officials are looking at whether the 70 rebels now in training should be sent back to a safer area inside Turkey where that Al Qaeda group may not be located.
