Turkey’s Prime Minister Binali Yildirim says government forces and Syrian rebels have completely expelled the Islamic State (IS) extremists from the Syrian-Turkish border.
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Turkey and its FSA allies engaged in a pincer move against ISIS forces over the weekend, with Turkish armor moving in from the west into the Syrian border town of al-Rai, while FSA forces pushed from the east.
Last week, the Pentagon was forced to call on Turkey and Kurdish forces to avoid fighting each other, after clashes in northern Syria following the launch of Ankara’s operation “Euphrates Shield”, which is targeting both IS and the YPG.
Turkey views those Kurdish militias as an offshoot of its own Kurdish insurgent group-the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK-and fears the Syrian Kurds want to create an autonomous Kurdish state in the border region.
The territorial losses at the border were the biggest blow to the militant group that also has suffered a series of recent battlefield setbacks in Syria and Iraq. In the meantime, Syrian government forces and their allies again laid siege to rebel-held eastern Aleppo. Since the Turkish operation began on August 24, the army says it has hit 300 targets with 1,306 rounds. Since the Turkish operation began August 24, the army says it has hit 383 targets with 1,599 rounds.
It comes after the Turkish-backed forces launched an all-out offensive along the border to drive out “all terrorist organisations”, including Kurdish groups which president Erdogan and his government deem to be illegal forces.
During the meeting, the parties discussed the Syrian crisis, the situation in Syria’s Manbij and Jarablus, as well as fighting the “Islamic State” (IS, aka ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) terrorist group.
But Turkey’s operation was focused just as firmly against USA -backed Kurdish forces, which it fired at last week and which it insists must withdraw to east of the Euphrates river.
The weekend gains follow a successful battle by Turkey’s military to seize Jarablus, which lies across the border from Gaziantep, a Turkish city of two million people that has been severely destabilized by the flow of foreign fighters entering and leaving Syria. USA -backed Kurdish fighters in Syria are “PKK terrorists disguised as a different group”, he said, referring to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
Now there are 250,000 civilians living in the areas of Aleppo controlled by terror group ISIS.
The PM added Turkey will not allow for the formation of an artificial state.
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”.
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The US president Barack Obama said on Sunday that Russian Federation and the US were “working around the clock” on the sidelines of the G20 summit in China to hammer out a deal for a truce in Syria, but that no deal had been reached yet.
