They declared victory just 14 hours later but today (7 September) Turkish officials reported that three Turkish soldiers were killed and four injured in an IS missile attack.
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After the registration process, they went through security checks before crossing into Syria through the border gate at Karkamis, the agency said.
He said more would return gradually. “I was all alone here”. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime were pushed out of Raqa, which lies on the Euphrates River, in 2013, making it the first provincial capital in Syria to fall out of government control.
The incursion began on August 24, days after a suicide bomber said to be linked to Islamic State killed at least 54 people at a wedding in the border city of Gaziantep. “This is the first time since the operation began”.
The latest ominous development is the Turkish invasion of the Syrian border town Jarablus, which had been occupied by ISIS.
Bakr said that all families from Jarablus, approximately 10,000 civilians, were now expected to be brought back to their hometown in the near future.
“I said “our soldiers should come together and discuss, then what is necessary will be done”, Erdogan was quoted as saying by the Hurriyet daily.
“Jarablus has been freed”, he told a rally in Gaziantep two weeks ago.
“We want to work with both of them”.
Turkey, which hosts 3 million Syrian refugees, has urged world powers to back plans for a “safe zone” in north Syria to stem the flow of migrants and to allow Syrians to return home.
However it remains unclear how prepared Turkey and its allies are to press deep inside Syria to prise from IS the town of Al-Bab further to the south or even the jihadists’ de-facto capital of Raqa. Erdogan said his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama floated the idea of joint action against the militants when they met at the G20 summit in China.
“Obama wants to do some things jointly concerning Raqqa”, Mr Erdogan said. The US State Department has not commented on the remarks.
The President of Turkey has said that Turkish troops are ready to work with the USA to push further into Isis territory and take on the group in its Syrian capital, Raqqa.
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Asked whether failure to extradite USA -based Fetullah Gulen, leader of the Fetullah extremist Organization (FETO), would do irreparable harm to Turkish-American relations, Rhodes said that Washington is not ignoring Ankara’s concerns.
