Clearing out Islamic State fighters from the northern Syria’s Manbij district – 100 miles southeast of the Turkish border city of Gaziantep – would pave the way for the eventual recapture of the terror group’s de facto capital of Raqqa, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said during a press conference Sunday in Antalya.
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But Turkey has kept the border closed, leaving civilians stuck between the violent front line with Islamic State to the east, the sealed border to the north, and the autonomous Kurdish canton of Afrin to the west.
The Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), which includes the Kurdish YPG militia, launched an attack against Islamic State-held areas north of Raqqa city last week.
Islamic State, the terrorist group also known as Isis, advanced in recent days into the opposition-held town of Marea.
Ankara is offering to begin joint counterterrorism operations with American forces to clear a key pocket of Islamic State territory along the Turkish-Syrian border, but with one catch: Kurdish forces can not be part of the deal. “Due to the closure of the Marea-Afrin road, an estimated 7,000 civilians are effectively trapped in Marea and Sheikh Issa towns”, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Monday. The group said it has received confirmed reports that at least four families, including women and children, were killed Friday on the outskirts of Azaz.
The fighting has displaced thousands more Syrians near the Turkish frontier, where more than 160,000 people are already sheltering, most of whom fled fighting earlier this year, the United Nations says.
The IS advance prompted a rare deal between the SDF and rebels Saturday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.
Meanwhile, Al Qaida’s Syrian affiliate Nusra Front and other insurgents on May 27 seized control of a town south of Damascus from government forces. The war, now in its sixth year, has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced half the country’s population.
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The state-run Anadolu Agency, quoting military officials, said the strikes came late Friday, hours after rockets fired from Syria hit the southern Turkish town of Kilis and wounded five people.
