Turkey’s army, backed by international coalition airstrikes, yesterday launched an operation involving fighter jets, tanks and elite ground troops to drive Islamic State (IS) militants out of a key Syrian border town.
The operation, codenamed “Euphrates Shield,” the most ambitious launched by Turkey in the Syria conflict, is aimed at clearing militants from the town of Jarabulus, which lies directly opposite the Turkish town of Karakamis, the Turkish prime minister’s office said.
The operation began at about 4am with Turkish artillery pounding dozens of Islamic State targets across Jarabulus.
Photo: AFP
Turkish F-16 fighter jets and coalition warplanes also hit targets inside Syria.
Media said an unspecified number of elite Turkish special forces were already on the ground in Syria.
Tensions had flared across the Syria-Turkey border the previous day, following rocket fire from Jarabulus that landed inside Turkey with the Turkish army firing howitzer rounds in response.
“The Turkish armed forces and the international coalition air forces have launched a military operation aimed at clearing the district of Jarabulus of the province of Aleppo from the terrorist organization DAESH,” the prime minister’s statement said, using an Arabic-language acronym for the Islamic State group.
The operation also appeared aimed at pre-empting any assault by Jarabulus by pro-Kurdish militias who also oppose the Islamic State group, but Turkey accuses of seeking to carve out a Kurdish region in northern Syria.
In an earlier interview with private NTV television, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said Ankara saw Jarabulus “as a national security matter.”
“What we have said, since the beginning, is that having Jarabulus or any other city held by IS is unacceptable,” he said.
Turkey will want to show with the operation that it is serious about taking on the Islamic State group, which has been blamed for a string of attacks inside the country, the latest a weekend attack on a Kurdish wedding in Gaziantep that left 54 dead.
Ankara was long accused of turning a blind eye to the rise of the group in Syria and even aiding its movements to-and-fro across the border, claims the government has denied.
The launch of the operation came the day US Vice President Joe Biden was to land in Ankara to meet Turkey’s leadership, with agreeing a unified strategy on Syria set to be a crucial issue.
He is by far the highest-ranking Western official to visit Turkey since the coup attempt to unseat Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Turkish F-16s bombed Islamic State targets in Jarabulus, the private NTV television reported, the first such assaults since a crisis with Russia in November last year sparked when the Turkish air force downed one of Moscow’s warplanes.
A dozen Islamic State targets were reported to have been completely destroyed in the airstrikes.
Turkish artillery destroyed 70 Islamic State targets, television said.
Security sources quoted by Turkish television said a small contingent of special forces traveled a few kilometers into Syria to secure the area before a possible larger ground operation.
NTV said that Russia had been informed of the action.
Television pictures showed plumes of while smoke rising above Jarabulus.
Syrian activists have said hundreds of pro-Ankara rebel forces are waiting on the Turkish side of the border to take part in a ground operation to seize Jarabulus.
The incursion by Turkish special forces is the first such into Syria since February last year, when hundreds of Turkish troops crossed the border to move the relics of the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire.
The movements have come at a critical juncture for Turkey in Syria’s five-and-a-half-year war, with signs growing it is on the verge of a landmark policy shift.
Ankara has called for the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, putting Turkey at odds with his main supporters, Iran and Russia.
The Syrian government condemned the incursion as a “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty.
“Syria demands the end of this aggression,” the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
“Any party conducting a battle against terrorism on Syrian soil must do so in coordination with the Syrian government and the Syrian army who have been fighting this war for five years,” it said.
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