Turkish tanks roll into Syria, opening new line of attack
Turkey and its rebel allies opened a new line of attack in northern Syria on September 3, as Turkish tanks rolled across the border and Syrian fighters swept in from the west to take villages held by Islamic State.
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| Syrian civilians, with Turkish Army tanks in the background, walk through the Turkish border as they are pictured from a village in Kilis province, Turkey, September 3, 2016. Ismail Coskun/Ihlas News Agency/via REUTERS. |
By supporting the rebels, mainly Arabs and Turkmen fighting under the loose banner of the Free Syrian Army, Turkey is hoping to drive out Islamic State militants and check the advance of US-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters.
The rebels last week took the frontier town of Jarablus with Turkish support. The operation, called Euphrates Shield, is Ankara's first full-scale Syrian incursion since the start of the five-year-old war.
On September 3 the tanks crossed the frontier and entered the Syrian rebel-controlled town of al-Rai to support the new offensive, a rebel spokesman and monitors said.
Al-Rai is about 55 km (34 miles) west of Jarablus, and part of a 90-km corridor near the Turkish border that Ankara says it is clearing of jihadists and protecting from Kurdish militia expansion.
The rebels then seized villages to the east and the south of al-Rai, according to one rebel official.
"They took several villages, about eight villages. At first they took two and withdrew from them, but then reinforcements came and there was an advance," Zakaria Malahifji of the Aleppo-based Fastaqim group told Reuters.
The Turkish-backed operation was putting pressure on Islamic State from both east and west of a stretch of territory it controls along the border between the towns.
"The operations are to work from al-Rai towards the villages that were liberated to the west of Jarablus," Colonel Ahmed Osman of the Sultan Murad rebel group said.
