Turkish jets hit 39 Daesh targets

Turkish warplanes destroyed 39 Daesh targets and killed four militants in northern Syria, the Turkish Army said on Saturday.
Turkey's ramping up of its airstrikes in northern Syria is part of Ankara's almost four-month-old “Euphrates Shield” operation with Turkish-backed fighters, which aims to push the radicals and Kurdish militia fighters away from the Syrian border area.
Turkish jets destroyed shelters, vehicles mounted with guns, and ammunition depots the latest airstrikes in the Al-Bab and Zarzur regions of northern Syria, the army said.
The Turkish Army on Friday said its airstrikes destroyed 34 Daesh targets, while a statement from the day before said it said it had hit 10 targets.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Friday the Turkish-backed fighters closed in on the key Daesh-held city of Al-Bab in northern Syria, with Turkish tanks and warplanes supporting the assault.
Hundreds of Arab and Turkmen fighters seized at least two villages west of Al-Bab, the fighters said on Friday. The city is of strategic importance to Turkey, partly because Kurdish-dominated militias have also been trying to take it from the radicals.
The advance of the Turkish-backed forces potentially pits them against both Kurdish fighters and Syrian regime forces in an increasingly complex battlefield.
Ankara is determined to prevent the Kurdish YPG militia, which it sees as a hostile force, from joining up cantons it controls along the Turkish border, fearing that would embolden Kurdish separatism at home.
Meanwhile, a US-backed alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters announced on Saturday “phase two” of its campaign for Daesh’s Syrian bastion of Raqqa.
Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) officials told AFP that US soldiers would be “on the front lines” of the push for the northern city.
The SDF will “begin phase two of the campaign, which aims to liberate territory west of Raqqa and isolate the city,” spokeswoman Jihan Sheikh Ahmed told reporters.
Speaking in the village of Aaliyah, north of Raqqa, Ahmed said the SDF had captured 700 square km of territory since it began its advance on the city on Nov. 5.
The alliance had also grown in size, she said, with more than 1,500 local fighters joining forces with the SDF after being “trained and equipped by the international coalition.”
The SDF’s coordination with the US-led coalition “will be stronger and more effective during the second phase of the campaign,” Ahmed said.
Two SDF officials told AFP that US soldiers would be taking part in the offensive “on the front lines” alongside SDF fighters.
“US forces were on the front lines of the first phase of this offensive, and one member of these forces was killed. Their participation will be even more effective alongside our forces in the second phase,” said SDF spokesman Talal Sello.
SDF adviser Nasser Hajj Mansour said: “American forces will be on the front lines of this phase.”
Backed by coalition airstrikes, the SDF has been pushing south from areas near the Turkish border, seizing a string of villages and advancing to within 25 km of the city.
With a pre-war population of about 240,000, Raqqa is the de facto capital of the self-styled caliphate Daesh declared across Iraq and Syria in 2014.
The terror group still holds Al-Bab, to the west, and most of the city of Deir Ezzor, to the southeast.

Source: Arab News