Turkey on Saturday sent more tanks into the northern Syrian village of al-Rai to fight Islamic State extremists, opening a new front after its intervention last month against the group, state media reported.
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The Turkish tanks crossed into northern Syria from the southeastern Turkish province of Kilis on Saturday, Turkish Daily Sabah reported.
Turkey said Wednesday a truce with Kurdish-led forces in northern Syria was “out of the question”, denying a United States claim the two sides had agreed to hold fire a week into Turkey’s cross-border offensive.
Turkish officials have said Turkish-backed forces in recent days have struck westwards, in jihadist areas.
About 20 tanks, five armoured personnel carriers, lorries and other armoured vehicles crossed into the Syrian town of Al Rai, according to the pro-government Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah.
But Turkey’s intervention is also an indication that the USA strategy of empowering Kurdish groups to fight the Islamic State in Syria has helped trigger an entirely new conflict, this time between US -backed militias and a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally.
Ankara says the Kurdish militia fighters in Syria have links with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is banned in Turkey and fighting Turkish forces in the south-east of the country.
Cook said the YPG had agreed to move east of the Euphrates River to meet one of Ankara’s demands, but he said some elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces remained in Manbij, south of Jarablus, for clearing operations.
The tanks entered from the Turkish border village of Elbeyli and linked up with Turkish-backed Syrian rebels at al-Rai, who are participating in the operation, dubbed Euphrates Shield.
A U.S. defence official in Washington, who requested anonymity, said that any continuing presence by the YPG in the area was “completely insignificant”.
Muslim also pushed for European and USA recognition of an autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria, one mirroring the Kurdish regional administration in neighboring Iraq.
Spokesman says coalition forces are very close to blocking all outside access for region under militant control..
At the time, he said: “Our operations will continue until terror organisations such as Daesh (Islamic State), the PKK and its Syrian arm, the YPG, cease to be threats for our citizens”.
At the Pentagon on Tuesday, Army Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. Central Command, called on Turkey and the YPG to stop fighting each other and focus on ISIL, another acronym for ISIS.
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Interior Minister Efkan Ala said Turkey had arrested 865 people since the start of 2016, more than half of the foreigners, in its crackdown on Islamic State and preventing the would-be jihadists crossing to join militants in Syria or Iraq. Ankara is a member of the US -led military coalition fighting Islamic State but considers the YPG a national security threat.
