The Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army units have also been fighting USA -backed Kurdish People’s Protection Units or the YPG.
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The Turkish military said its warplanes had bombed three sites around the Syrian settlements of Arab Ezza and al-Ghundura, west of Jarablus, roughly in the centre of the 90-km stretch of territory that Turkey says it aims to clear.
“No, they [YPG] have not retreated [from areas bordering Turkey]”.
Turkey has swept Islamic State militants and Kurdish YPG militia from an area of northern Syria, but Syrian Kurdish forces have still not met a Turkish demand to withdraw to the east of the Euphrates river, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday.
Toner added that Washington had been in dialogue with the Turks over its support “for those Kurdish forces who are, frankly, very capable forces fighting to remove Daesh from its foothold in northern Syria”.
The strikes on the Kurdish People’s Protection Units militia (YPG) caused alarm in Washington, which regards the group as an ally in the fight against Islamic State.
Turkey’s state-run news agency says Turkish tanks have entered Syria’s Cobanbey district northeast of Aleppo in a “new phase” of the Euphrates Shield operation. “We do not believe the U.S. claims that the terrorists have moved to the east of Euphrates”, Erdogan said at a press conference at the Ankara airport ahead of his departure to China to take part in the Group of Twenty (G20) summit. US officials have also said it has mostly withdrawn its forces to the east of the Euphrates, a natural boundary cutting through northern Syria.
The U.N.’s top humanitarian affairs official says he was unable to reach agreement with Jordan on delivering aid to more than 70,000 Syrians stranded on the kingdom’s desert border.
Senior Turkish officials told Middle East Eye British, French, US and other citizens fighting alongside the YPG would be treated as “terrorists. regardless of whether they are members of allied countries”. “The proof depends on our own observation”.
He also said Turkey had repeatedly proposed the establishment of a “safe zone” in Syria as a solution but said the idea had not received the backing of other world powers. He urged the United States to work with its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally Turkey on “all different terrorist threats”, a reference to their stark differences in Syria policy.
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“Right now, people say they have gone to the east but we say no, they haven’t crossed”, he said during a speech in Ankara. “So it would be very useful if we would apply this operation with the USA forces together”.
