And, a spokesman for a Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army group called the Sultan Murad Brigade said its fighters have seized a series of villages to the west of Jarablus.
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Turkey’s military said 25 Kurdish militants were killed in its air strikes.
Turkey’s state news agency says the Turkish Military Joint Special Task Forces and coalition airplanes have targeted the bases of suspected “terror groups” south of the Syrian town of Jarablus. The Turkish Armed Forces are taking part in the “Euphrates Shield” operation launched on August 24 to back Syrian rebels’ bid to clear ISIL from territories bordering Turkey.
Turkey-backed Syrian rebels captured two villages from forces allied to the Kurdish-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria on Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. IS, to whose activities Turkish intelligence had once turned a blind eye when it did not provide covert assistance, was carrying out repeated terrorist bomb attacks in Turkey.
The Jarablus Military Council is supported by the USA -backed and Kurdish-led Syria Democratic Forces.
Turkey’s stance has put it at odds with Washington, which sees the YPG as a rare reliable ally on the ground in Syria, where Washington is trying to defeat Daesh while also opposing President Bashar al-Assad’s government in a complex, multi-sided, five-year-old civil war. Instead, the two militias fought last Wednesday’s Turkish occupation of Jarablus, renaming their combined force the Jarablus Military Council and dedicated it to evicting the Turkish invaders.
“No terrorist group can hold Turkey captive”, Yildirim said in a press conference on Friday, according to wire service accounts.
The pro-Kurdish fighters said earlier Turkey had for the first time carried out airstrikes on its positions. SDF-allied militia damaged three Turkish tanks, it said.
Turkish security sources said warplanes and artillery had hit YPG sites south of Jarablus and towards Manbij, a city captured by the SDF this month in a US -backed operation.
He said another village to the west also came under attack late Wednesday but said it was not clear if it was from Turkish-backed forces or from Islamic State militants.
It fears Kurdish fighters gaining an unbroken strip of territory along its border, which would be a huge boost to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a banned Kurdish rebel group fighting for autonomy in Turkey. The immediate target was Isis, but a more important Turkish objective is to strike at the political and military power of the Syrian Kurds who are already in control of much of the territory south of the Syrian-Turkish frontier.
Turkey said one of its soldiers was killed on Saturday when a rocket hit a tank that it said came from a YPG-controlled area. It was the first Turkish death reported in the campaign.
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Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member and part of the USA -led coalition against Islamic State, has seen a series of deadly bombings this year blamed on the radical Islamists. Jihadist cells are dismantled after several attacks blamed on the IS, including one which kills 103 people at Ankara’s central railway station in October.
