The Turkish Security Council and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim announced Thursday that Turkey would officially conclude “Euphrates Shield,” a military operation begun in August to keep the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia from inching too close to the Turkish border.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a U.K.-based group that uses ground sources to monitor the war in Syria, reports that “there is not truth” to the Turkish military’s claim that it is close to capturing the Syrian town of al-Bab, an Islamic State stronghold located 20 miles from the Turkish border.
Turkey on Monday closed a border crossing with Syria in the southeastern province of Kilis after violent clashes in the Syrian town of Azaz, a local official said.
Islamic State militants in northern Syria are putting up “stiff resistance” to attacks by Turkish-backed rebel fighters, Turkey’s military said on Wednesday, almost two months after it launched an incursion to drive them away from its border.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday said Turkey had a duty to defeat the Islamic State extremist group, adding its operation inside Syria was a first step towards this goal.
Turkey and its rebel allies opened a new line of attack in northern Syria on Saturday, as Turkish tanks rolled across the border and Syrian fighters swept in from the west to take villages held by the Islamic State militant group (ISIS).
The Syrian government condemned Wednesday’s Turkish incursion into the Islamic State group-held border district of Jarabulus as a “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty.
