Turkey sends more tanks to Syria, warns Kurdish militia

Turkey sends more tanks to Syria, warns Kurdish militia
Updated 26 August 2016
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Turkey sends more tanks to Syria, warns Kurdish militia

Turkey sends more tanks to Syria, warns Kurdish militia

KARKAMIS: Turkey sent more tanks into Syria on Thursday and sternly warned a Kurdish militia to withdraw from frontline positions, a day after pro-Ankara Syrian opposition fighters captured a key border town from extremists.
The tanks joined those which crossed the frontier on Wednesday in the so-called Operation Euphrates Shield, which Turkey says aims to rid the northern Syrian border area of both Daesh extremists and Kurdish militia.
Hundreds of Syrian rebel fighters — backed by Turkish tanks, warplanes and special forces — had on Wednesday taken the town of Jarabulus to end over three years of extremists’ control.
But Defense Minister Fikri Isik warned the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia to move back east across the Euphrates or also face intervention from Turkey.
The new contingent of tanks roared across a dirt road west of the Turkish border town of Karkamis, throwing up a cloud of dust in their wake before crossing the border, an AFP photographer said. The operation is the most ambitious launched by Turkey during the five-and-a-half-year Syria conflict and has been carried out in full coordination with its NATO ally the United States.