Turkish troops head to the Syrian border, in Karkamis, Turkey, Saturday, Aug. 27, 2016.
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Fighting has since intensified south of the town, where clashes erupted between Turkish troops and forces belonging to the Kurdish Democratic Union (PYD) party, which Ankara considers a terrorist group linked with Kurdish militants in Turkey.
Turkey launched the cross-border offensive on Wednesday to support the FSA in its fight against terror group DAESH.
President Tayyip Erdogan is expected to visit the site of that wedding attack in Gaziantep, in southeastern Turkey, to pay his respects to families of the victims later on Sunday.
In comments broadcasted by CNN Turkey, Numan Kurtulmus the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister, said Turkey aims to take control of a broad stretch of the border in a bid to protect Turkish citizens staying within the region and as one of the objectives Operation Euphrates Shield. But he didn’t specify a goal for the fight against the Kurdish forces.
Ankara announced on Wednesday that Turkish forces, backed by US-led coalition aircraft, had begun a military operation dubbed Euphrates Shield to clear the Syrian border town of Jarabulus of militants from the Daesh jihadist group, outlawed in Russian Federation and many other countries. But Turkey’s president vowed to press ahead with the military operation until the IS and Kurdish Syrian fighters no longer pose a security threat to Ankara.
Turkey’s army and an allied Syrian rebel group called Sultan Murad were advancing toward the Syrian-Kurdish held city of Manbij on August 28 as fighting between the sides escalated in northern Syria.
At least 35 civilians were killed in Syria by Turkish shelling and air strikes, a group monitoring the Syrian war said on Sunday.
The Britain-based Observatory said the bombardment targeted an area south of the former IS border stronghold of Jarabulus, which Turkish-led forces captured on the first day of the incursion.
Ankara wants to prevent Kurdish forces gaining control of an unbroken swathe of Syrian territory on Turkey’s frontier.
The Jarablus Military Council, which is part of the SDF, said its fighters will withdraw to areas south of the Sajour River, a tributary of the Euphrates. “Our operations against terrorist organisations will continue until the end”, he told a rally of thousands of supporters on Sunday. It said SDF-allied militia damaged three Turkish tanks there. He said 50 Turkish tanks were taking part in the offensive. “The Turkish government is striking to terrorists only”.
Turkish-backed Syrian rebels have already seized five villages near Jarablus from Islamic State.
Syrian warplanes renewed their bombing of the besieged al-Waer neighborhood in the central city of Homs. An activist in the neighborhood of Bebars al-Talawy said there were at least a dozen airstrikes, killing one person.
Hundreds of fighters and their families were bused north into rebel-held territory in Idlib province, with other civilians transferred to government territory near Damascus for resettlement. The rockets were fired from an area where the YPG militia were known to be active, and the Russian-made weapons are typical of those used by YPG militants. The funeral was for 15 children and women who were killed in the Bab al-Nairab neighborhood of Aleppo just days ago, the Syrian Observatory said.
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The al-Waer neighborhood of almost 75,000 people has been under siege since March and has been one area that U.N agencies have reported hard to access.
