Turkish tanks entered the Syrian town of al-Rai near the border on Saturday in support of a new insurgent attack against Islamic State, a rebel spokesman said.
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Since then, rebels have been seizing villages along the Turkish border near Jarablus and the western Cobanbey district from Daesh.
The offensive would put pressure on Islamic State from both east and west of a stretch of territory it controls along the border between Jarablus and al-Rai.
The private Dogan news agency reported at least 20 tanks and five armored personnel carriers crossed at the Turkish border town of Elbeyli, across from the Syrian rebel-held town of al-Rai.
Within 14 hours on August 24, Turkish-backed Syrian rebels recaptured the border town of Jarabulus from IS and continued to make gains in villages nearby.
Last week, Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country would continue its military operation in Syria, despite the U.S. expressing “deep concern” about Turkish strikes on Kurdish-aligned groups that Washington has backed in its battle against IS.
Turkey and allied Syrian rebels have also fought USA -backed Kurdish forces known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, around Jarablus. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group confirmed that the rebels had taken several villages.
The intervention last month caused another complication in what was already a tangled five-year civil war, with Ankara and Washington supporting different proxy groups seeking to retake territory from IS.
The Turkish military responded to the rockets on Saturday with howitzers, striking two weapons depots and bunkers, and “destroying the locations and the Daesh terrorists there”, the state-run Anadolu news agency said, referring to IS by an Arabic acronym.
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At the time, he said: “Our operations will continue until terror organisations such as Daesh (Islamic State), the PKK and its Syrian arm, the YPG, cease to be threats for our citizens”.
