The Syrian Kurds have begun to carve out autonomous zones for themselves and their latest military push appears aimed at linking up their eastern territory with a western enclave.
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Turkish media reported that tanks and armoured vehicles amassed on the Syrian border.
Earlier, Turkey claimed it shelled Islamic State positions approximately 50 miles away, near the Syrian border town Jarablus.
A rebel official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters that hundreds of FSA and opposition fighters were expected to launch an assault on Jarablus from inside Turkey in the next few days.
Anadolu Agency said Turkish artillery fired 40 rounds against IS targets in retaliation, after three rockets fired from Syria landed in an empty field in the town of Kilis. Fierce clashes erupted between the two sides over control of the northeastern province of Hasakeh last week, and Syrian warplanes bombed Kurdish positions for the first time, prompting the U.S.to scramble its jets to protect American troops in the area.
Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said in emailed comments on Tuesday that Russian Federation and the Syrian government will announce “the first 48-hour humanitarian break in hostilities” in Aleppo as soon as they receive an official request from the United Nations envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura.
O’Brien said the United Nations asked to deliver aid to almost 1 million people in besieged and hard-to-reach areas in August, but the Syrian government approved less than 50 percent of the requests, denying aid to rebel-held eastern Aleppo and several other besieged areas.
The plan has not been confirmed by the Turkish authorities but the foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, said on Monday that the border area had to be “totally cleansed” of jihadis.
“We have killed more than 650 IS terrorists in (northern Iraq’s) Bashiqa camp alone with artillery fire”, he added.
The Kurdish Hawar News Agency says government forces and pro-government militias have agreed to withdraw from Hasakeh and leave it in under the control of the local Kurdish police force, the Asayish, as part of the terms of the cease-fire.
In response, the Turkish government has vowed to eradicate the Islamic State from it’s border regions with Syria. Islamic State and Syrian rebel factions hold villages on the other side of the border.
Syria’s complex, multi-sided war has created a patchwork of areas across the country controlled by the government, rebels, Kurdish forces or ISIL. One of them exploded in the garden of a house, but no one was hurt.
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“The Turkish state officially supports Daesh and bombs the positions of the Manbij military council and its countryside in the northern axis of the defense positions at Sajur river“, Sharvan Darwish, a spokesperson for the Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said on Monday, ARA News reported.
