– Reuters pic, August 5, 2015.US aircraft and drones are arriving in Turkish air bases and a comprehensive battle against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) militants will be launched soon, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said today.
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The United States thinks that at least five Syrian rebels trained by the U.S. military have been captured by members of Syria’s al-Qaida affiliate, Nusra Front, a U.S. official said on Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis declined to go into specifics about what platform the strike was launched from or whether it was successful, aside from saying it was a strike against the militant group, commonly known as ISIL or ISIS.
“The group nearly certainly does not believe some of the things it has said lately, including protesting at US strikes on Nusra, but you can hardly blame them for such attempts at rescuing their credibility on the ground”, said Lister.
Meanwhile, Qatar has broken ranks with the Arab League to give close ally Turkey its full support for air strikes in northern Iraq, according to an official foreign ministry statement.
Plans are now underway to provide air cover to the U.S.-trained group as it attempts to sweep the insurgents from a strip of territory stretching about 80 km (50 miles) along the Turkish frontier.
In July, the US secretary of defense, Ashton Carter, said the US was actively training only 60 rebels, nearly a year after the programme’s launch.
Diplomatic efforts to broaden the fight against Islamic State are being hampered by conflicting strategies toward Syria, where a civil war has raged for more than four years.
Before this week, Ankara had only permitted the United States to fly surveillance missions from Incirlik, forcing the United States to rely largely on more distant bases and cutting down on the time U.S. aircraft can spend over target areas.
In an interview with the BBC, Captain Ammar al-Wawi criticized the U.S. for failing to protect its 54 fighters when they came under attack from the Nusra Front. Turkey is concerned that the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its militia, called People’s Protection Units (YPG), are trying to seize the momentum of their military gains to set up an independent Kurdish state along the Turkish border in northern Syria.
Russian Federation sees a role for Syrian government forces commanded by President Bashar al-Assad, who the U.S. and its allies, including Turkey, want to remove from power. There were reports of disagreements over how the bases are to be used.
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The president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, Massound Barzani, has denounced Turkey’s military operations against his region, which Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency reported 260 PKK militants were killed, along with civilian deaths. The fighters had scattered out in Syria and they lost track of them. He was using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.
