It was the second day of artillery strikes targeting the Syrian town of Jarablus – which is held by IS – and came in response to two mortar shells hitting the Turkish town of Karkamis, according to local media. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government regulations, did not provide further details.
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The Gaziantep attack came amid continuing turmoil in Turkey in the month after Erdogan’s government survived an attempted coup by rogue military officers, which the Turkish leader has blamed on US -based cleric Fethullah Gulen.
Turkey’s prime minister was more cautious on Monday, saying it was too early to say who carried out the attack, though security sources say witnesses reported the bomber was a child.
It fears attempts by Syrian Kurds to extend their control along the border with Syria could add momentum to the Kurdish insurgency within Turkey.
This comes after a suicide bombing at a wedding in a Turkish city near the Syrian border over the weekend killed 54 people.Turkey vowed to “completely cleanse” Islamic State militants from the country after the bombing. The blasts hit police and military targets – a hallmark of PKK attacks, in contrast to ISIS, which tends to conduct mass casualty attacks on soft targets.
US -backed Syrian rebel groups have been seizing territory from ISIS near the Turkish border recently.
Turkish army howitzers stationed inside Turkey fired on IS targets in the town of Jarablus and PYD targets around the area of Manbij, the CNN-Turk and NTV channels reported at the time.
The developments put the U.S.’s only clear proxy in Syria, the SDF, and its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally, Turkey, on track for a confrontation over Jarablus, though the SDF official, Nasser Haj Mansour, would not comment on whether the SDF would send fighters to the town.
“A clue has not yet been found concerning the perpetrator”, Yildirim told reporters following a weekly Cabinet meeting. With Turkey becoming a police state with a press less free than not only Russian Federation but perhaps also Iran, it is time to ratchet up Voice of America and other broadcasting both in Turkish and in Kurdish to fill an information gap that Erdoğan seeks to maintain.
The leader of the newly declared “Jarablus military council”, set with the aim of mounting its own campaign to seize Jarablus with SDF support, was assassinated on Monday, the Observatory said. There was no immediate comment from Turkey. Mansour, the Kurdish official, said two “agents of Turkey” had been detained over the killing.
The United Nations says its first convoy to a besieged or hard-to-reach area in Syria this month is delivering food, health care items and other desperately needed aid to 35,000 people in the besieged town of al-Waer. The Kurdish Hawar News Agency said government forces agreed to withdraw from Hasakeh as part of the truce.
Cavusoglu said Turkey had become a main target for IS because of the nation’s efforts to stop recruits from crossing into Syria to join the fighting, as well as hundreds of arrests of IS suspects in Turkey. There were reports of mortar shellings in the area early Tuesday.
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US-backed Kurdish forces have been eager to drive ISIS out and to remove the group’s access to resupply of materiel and fighters from Turkey.
