Turkish forces backed by Syrian rebels say they have driven Daesh militants out of territory along the Syrian border with Turkey.
Advertisement
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday said that IS (Daesh) militants “had lost its contact with the outside world after losing the remaining border villages between the Sajur River. and Al-Rai”.
The operation, called Euphrates Shield, was also aimed at stopping the advance of US-backed Kurdish forces, which are also battling the extremist group.
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.
But the group still holds territory in Syria and Iraq.
Mr Yildirim said Turkey would never allow the formation of an artificial state in the north of Syria.
A demonstration broke out along the Syrian border on Friday, where Turkey is building a concrete wall.
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. Turkey also describes Kurdish groups as terrorists. “We have grave differences with the Russians in terms of both the parties we support but also the process that is required to bring about peace in Syria”.
Some 5,000 USA and Turkish-backed Syrian rebels have crossed into northern Syria from Turkey to participate in the so-called Euphrates Shield operation, according to local journalist Adnan al-Hussein, who is embedded with the groups. Al-Rai is 55 kilometers (34 miles) west of Jarablus, a border town seized by Turkey-backed Syrian rebels last week.
The rebels, mainly Syrian Arabs and Turkmen fighting under the loose banner of the Free Syrian Army, took charge of the frontier after clearing out the Sunni hardline group, state-run Anadolu Agency said on Sunday.
Last week, Turkey launched its first major incursion into neighbouring Syria since the civil war began more than five years ago.
“So it’s a unsafe possibility that we’re witnessing ISIS gear up for a campaign to expand westward into either or both regime and opposition territory as it loses to the anti-ISIS coalition”, she said.
Speaking to reporters after a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama at the G20 gathering of world leaders in China, Erdogan said: “It is our wish that a terror corridor not be formed across our southern border”.
Asked how the Turkish-led offensive had been able to secure a stretch of 55km in just two days, mopping up a dozen or more towns and villages, Mr Abdulrahman said: “Isis have stopped fighting there, they are moving out”. The aim of these terrorist organisations is… to form a state in these countries…
Advertisement
The areas in which Turkey and the rebels it backed are operating have been cleared of nonarmed personnel, he said, amid claims that Kurdish civilians have been killed.
