A wall along the border between Turkey and Syria is pictured near the southeastern town of Deliosman in Kilis province, Turkey, August 29, 2016.
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The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has been expelled from its last positions on the Turkish-Syrian border while Syrian forces again laid siege to rebel strongholds in war-torn Aleppo.
A senior Turkish official said three soldiers were killed and four wounded in the attack south of the border town of Al-Rai.
Turkey had blamed the death of one soldier on August 28 in a similar attack on Kurdish militia. However, that could sharpen tensions with the United States over Syria policy.
Turkey is fighting a three-decade-old Kurdish insurgency in the southeast and fears that the YPG’s advances will embolden militants at home.
Indeed, with Isis nearly pushed back from the border, Turkey appears already to have turned its full attention to the US-backed YPG.
Erdogan’s spokesman said on Tuesday that Russian Federation had voiced full support for Turkey’s operation to clear the border of Islamic State. The city, Syria’s third largest, is largely under government control, with only one neighbourhood still under opposition control.
Some 5,000 US and Turkish-backed Syrian rebels have crossed into northern Syria from Turkey to participate in the so-called Euphrates Shield operation, according to local journalist Adnan al-Hussein, who is embedded with the groups.
This week Turkish troops and Syrian rebels drove IS back from the last stretch of Syria’s northern border under its control, severing key supply lines to the extremist group’s self-styled caliphate.
Jennifer Cafarella, a Syria expert with the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, said it was too soon to say if the attacks by the IS group were a reaction to its recent defeats along the border. That position has caused friction with Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member and a partner in the fight against ISIS.
In July 2015, a Turkish soldier was killed after IS militants shot across the border into Turkey.
President Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday raised concern about the formation of a “terror corridor” along Turkey’s Syrian border.
Some Kurds have criticized Turkey for its role in Syria.
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The Syrian government has also strongly denounced Turkey’s incursion as a violation of its sovereignty. The government says this has been completely secured in the weekend s operation. “The invasion of Jarablus is totally an adversarial approach against Kurds and we will never accept it”, Selahattin Demirtas told reporters. The Observatory said three people were killed.
