The Kurdish fighters in Syria, a critical part of the US-backed campaign against ISIL, took near complete control of Hasaka city on Tuesday. Islamic State and Syrian rebel factions hold villages on the other side of the border.
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In Syria, a Kurdish-led group known as the Syria Democratic Forces earlier this month liberated the nearby town of Manbij from the Islamic State group, triggering concerns in Ankara that they would seize the entire border strip with Turkey.
White and grey plumes of smoke rose from the hills in northern Syria, local media showed in footage broadcast live from the Turkish town of Karkamis across the border from Jarablus.
YPG-controlled areas of northern Syria include an uninterrupted 400 km (250 mile) stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border from the eastern frontier with Iraq to the Euphrates river, and a pocket of territory in northwestern Syria.
The shelling of Islamic State in Jarablus, a city on the border, continued for a second day, while the extremist group retaliated with mortar fire into Turkey.
“The aim of the operation is to ensure border security and Syria’s territorial integrity while supporting the US -led coalition against Islamic State”, one military source said, adding work to open a passage for ground forces was underway.
A Turkish army tank and an armored vehicle are stationed near the border with Syria, in Karkamis, Turkey, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2016.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Wednesday’s operation was launched in response to a string of attacks in Turkey, including a suicide bomb attack at a wedding party near the border which killed 54 people.
The operation in Jarablus is meant to safeguard Turkey’s own security, according to Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala, who said Ankara “cannot sit and watch”.
She cites the Turkish prime minister who said: “It is clear that the [Assad] regime has understood the structure the Kurds are trying to form in the north [of Syria] has started to become a threat for Syria too”.
“The Turkish Armed Forces and the International Coalition Air Forces have launched a military operation aimed at clearing the district of Jarabulus of the province of Aleppo from the terrorist organisation Daesh”, the prime minister’s statement said, using an Arabic acronym for the IS group.
Without confirming the operation, foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu pledged to give “all kinds of support” to push the militants out of Jarabulus, after Syrian rebels said they were preparing an assault from Turkish soil. This comes after two mortar rounds, believed to have been fired by the militants, landed on Turkish territory.
It also coincides with the visit today of US Vice President Joseph Biden to meet with top Turkish officials under conditions that were already fraught with tension.
Now an inflection point may finally be at hand, with increasingly important Turkey suggesting Assad could play a role in an unspecified transition period.
Turkey on Tuesday ordered residents to evacuate a Turkish border town that lies opposite the Syrian town of Jarabulus controlled by Islamic State (IS) jihadists, television reported.
“The overwhelming majority of the city is under the control of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Asayish, apart from the security zone”, said Naser Haj Mansour, the Kurdish official, adding that some fighting was still underway.
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Abdel-Sattar al-Jader was shot by unknown gunmen late Monday, an hour after he accused Turkey of mobilizing fighters and “terrorists” for Jarablus. The U.S. says it has embedded some 300 special forces with the SDF. The Kurdish Hawar News Agency said government forces agreed to withdraw from Hasakeh as part of the truce.
