“The latest step in U.S. -Turkey cooperation in the fight against #ISIS”.
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Inside Syria, Turkish tanks opened a new line of attack.
By nightfall, Syrian rebels backed by the Turkish forces seized seven villages from the Islamic State, according to local journalist Ahmad al-Khatib.
The loss of the Turkish border will deprive IS of a key transit point for recruits and supplies, though the group continues to hold territory in both Syria and Iraq. “There is no more Isis at the border”.
It added that all roads linking rebel-held eastern Aleppo with opposition areas outside the city “have been cut”.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, which maintains a network of contacts inside the country, put the toll at 47 dead.
About 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.
The strip of land bordering Turkey and Syria has been cleared of ISIS militants, said Turkish Prime Minister Beinali Yildirim in a televised speech on Sunday. Al-Rai is about 55 kilometers west of Jarablus.
The attack occurred south of al-Rai, where Turkish tanks and armoured personnel carriers were deployed to support Ankara-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters in their southward advance against IS militants, Turkish media reported.
This comes just one day after the Turkish government sent military reinforcements to the Syrian northern city of Jarablus, that’s been taken by the Turkish forces and allied rebels of the Euphrates Shield Brigades on August 24 without resistance from ISIS.
Turkey’s success is likely to deliver a blow to the Syrian Kurdish YPG, which has been gaining territory in Syria’s north after working with the US-led coalition against the jihadist force.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan raised concern about the formation of a “terror corridor” along Turkey’s Syrian border.
As Washington urged Turkey and the Kurdish forces not to fight each other, Russian Federation and Iran had also voiced their concerns, with Moscow calling on Ankara to avoid attacking any ethnic groups while Tehran demanding an end to the campaign. From the beginning we have been defending Turkey’s territorial integrity.
Ahmed Osman, commander of the Sultan Murad rebel group, one of the Turkish-backed forces, told Reuters he would like to see a permanent “safe zone” but that this would require an agreement between Turkey, the United States and Russian Federation.
Previous diplomatic efforts have resulted in warring parties agreeing to a “cessation of hostilities”, a brief pause in the fighting allowing for humanitarian aid to be delivered to suffering civilian populations.
“Currently, conflict lines are too insecure for numerous town’s displaced to return safely”, the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA said in a report last week, referring to Jarablus which had a pre-war population of about 27,500 people.
Meanwhile the war grinds on.
The SANA news agency reported blasts in the coastal city of Tartus, the central city of Homs, the suburbs of the capital Damascus, and the northeastern city of Hasakeh.
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SANA said “Syrian army air force carried out intensive air strikes against gatherings and fortifications of Jaish al-Fateh terrorists in Aleppo countryside, destroying a number of their vehicles and killing scores of them and injuring others”. “At first they took two and withdrew from them, but then reinforcements came and there was an advance”, Zakaria Malahifji of the Aleppo-based Fastaqim group told Reuters.
