Turkish air strikes hit and destroyed four building used by the Islamic State militants earlier on Friday, the army said.
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Jarablus, which had been held by Islamic State, was the first town captured by Turkey’s army and its Syrian rebel allies in an offensive launched on August 24 that aims to sweep away jihadists and Syrian Kurdish militias from the frontier.
“Two members of our security forces were killed by Turkish snipers before their artillery attacked us”, Ahmed Ali, a wounded Kurdish fighter, told VOA.
Four days later, the Turkish army suffered its first fatality in northern Syria, in a rocket attack blamed on Kurdish militia.
“Some groups of Syrian refugees are voluntarily leaving Turkey and settling in Syria’s Jarabulus, previously liberated from the IS militants as part of the Shield of the Euphrates operation”, AFAD said.
Last week, ISIS fighters were expelled from their last positions along the Turkish-Syrian border, depriving the group of a key crossing point for recruits and supplies. The terror group has since been removed from most of the border territory in once controlled.
“What Turkey focuses and insists on is that instead of exclusively the YPG forces, the operations must be conducted, as the core of the operatives, by the local people of the region, instead of the YPG”, Isik said in an interview in London.
Last month, The US defence secretary has called on Turkey and Kurdish forces in northern Syria to stay focused on fighting ISIL and not to target each other. Casualties are unclear, but Turkish media claimed at least one ISIS fighter to have been killed.
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As well as attacking the jihadists, Turkey has been working to push out the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia from the area.
