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More Turkish Tanks Roll Into Syria
Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army rebels have cleared the area between the northern Syrian border towns of Azaz and Jarablus, Turkey’s prime minister, Binali Yildirim, said.
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“IS has lost its contact with the outside world after losing the remaining border villages”, the Observatory said.
The Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army units have also been fighting USA -backed Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).
The Turkish military launched an incursion into northern Syria last month with the stated aims of clearing Islamic State from its last foothold at the border and preventing expansion by the Kurdish militia seen as a threat by Ankara.
The territorial losses at the border were a big blow to the militant group, which has suffered a series of recent battlefield setbacks in Syria and Iraq. The “Islamic State” (IS, ISIL, ISIS or Daesh), the YPG and the PYD are the most active terrorist groups in Syria.
Turkey is fighting a three-decade-old Kurdish insurgency in its southeast and fears that gains by YPG will embolden militants at home.
Turkey launched Operation Euphrates Shield on August 24 in cooperation with the USA -led anti-Daesh coalition to clear terrorist groups from Turkey’s borders.
Turkish tanks crossed into Syria to the west of a frontier town seized from the Islamic State group last week, in a “new phase” of an operation aimed at sealing off the last stretch of border controlled by the extremists. Turkey considers YPG a terrorist organization and an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.
The plan would need Russia to convince President Bashar al-Assad to agree on grounding his air force, a move that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said was not the goal.
In an e-mailed press statement, Turkey’s military said the FSA has taken 20 villages from the Islamic State, adding that the Turkish army struck 83 Islamic State targets.
“Given the gaps of trust that exist, that’s a tough negotiation, and we haven’t yet closed the gaps in a way where we think it would actually work”, Obama said at a news conference.
In comments to reporters after meeting Obama, Erdogan reiterated that the Kurds are as much of a target of Turkey’s Syria intervention as the Islamic State.
The Turkish government also deems the Syrian-Kurdish YPG group a terrorist organisation. Daesh is an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group. The wall is being erected from Karkamis, a Turkish town across the border from Jarablus, to Suruc, which lies across from the Syrian town of Kobane.
In Hangzhou, China, meanwhile, President Barack Obama said the USA and Russian Federation have not given up on negotiations to halt the bloodshed in Syria, but acknowledged that “gaps of trust” exist between the rival powers.
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Now there are 250,000 civilians living in the areas of Aleppo controlled by terror group ISIS.