“From Azaz to Jarablus, 57 miles of our border has been completely secured. All terrorist organisations have been repulsed and they have gone”, Al Jazeera quoted him as saying.
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“ISIL has lost its contact with the outside world after losing the remaining border villages”, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict in Syria.
A spokesman for one Turkish-backed Syrian faction said that 100 Turkish troops accompanied 30 tanks across the border, linking up with the rebels at al-Rai.
But the group still holds territory in Syria and Iraq.
It said the incursion, dubbed Operation Euphrates Shield, was meant to engage the Daesh Takfiri terrorists in the Syrian-Turkish border area as well as Kurdish fighters, who were themselves fighting Daesh. Syrian Kurdish groups reported that Turkey at first seized ISIS held areas before pushing south into areas held by Kurdish militias, who are also fighting against ISIS.
The establishment of such a corridor in northern Syria, which would strengthen the hands of Kurdish groups to launch a Kurdish state in the region, is the biggest fear of Turkey.
In July, they severed the only road into the rebel neighbourhoods, the key Castello Road running from the Turkish border in the north, creating food and fuel shortages in the east.
Daesh is another term for Islamic State, while the PYD is the political wing of Syrian YPG militia, which Ankara says is an extension of Turkey’s outlawed PKK Kurdish militant group.
The military said two Turkey-backed Syrian rebels were killed and two wounded rebels were also evacuated.
Sources also revealed that the Free Syrian Army, comprised predominantly of Syrian Arabs and Turkmen fighters, besides taking control of a number of new villages, also reached 24 kilometers south of the Turkish border and are now present in the Sucu Cayi region, west of the Euphrates River.
To the northeast of Aleppo, Turkish-backed rebels pushed Islamic State out of areas around the town of al-Rai near the Turkish border on the second day of an offensive launched from al-Rai.
His statement came as the USA embassy in Turkey announced that the US military has attacked ISIS targets in Syria using mobile rocket launchers it has based on Turkish territory for the first time.
Turkey’s direct military involvement in the push against IS began late last month, when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – responding to a civilian massacre in Turkey’s southeast – sent warplanes, tanks and artillery to crush terror threats on the border. They have lost scores of fighters in recent weeks in a battle to open a corridor into the city and lift the government’s blockade.
“Obama wants to do some things together concerning Raqqa in particular”, Erdogan said in comments published by Hurriyet newspaper, following meetings in China with Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other world leaders.
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“Many of the groups considered acceptable by the USA have actually affiliated with the Nusra Front, while the Nusra Front is using them to avoid being attacked”, Ryabkov told Russian media, citing a longstanding complaint of his government.
