Turkish military and Syrian rebels storm border city held by Islamic State

Syrian rebel fighters backed by Turkish air and ground units stormed a Syrian border city held by Islamic State on Wednesday, officials and activists said, in what was seen as an unprecedented operation aimed at ousting the jihadist group while preventing Syrian Kurdish militias, Ankara’s bete noire, from establishing a foothold in the area. 

Turkish artillery pounded Islamic State positions in the city of Jarablus, approximately 62 miles northeast of the city of Aleppo and less than 2 miles from the Turkish border, in the early morning hours on Wednesday. The barrage preceded a wide-scale offensive that saw Turkish tanks cross into Syrian territory even as special forces units cleared the path for Syrian rebels to storm the area. 

The offensive, dubbed “Euphrates Shield,” was intended to “strengthen Turkey’s border security by clearing away terrorist groups, and support Syria’s territorial integrity,” according to a report by Turkey’s state news agency Anadolu. 

Mahmoud Ali, head of the pro-opposition Jarablus Local Council, said in a phone interview Wednesday that a number of rebel factions had entered villages west of Jarablus before advancing to the city itself. 

Islamic State units were escaping from the south of the city — at least 12 vehicles managed to flee, Ali said.  

“In a few hours this operation will be finished,” he said.

A video uploaded by a Syrian rebel near Jarablus depicted his fellow fighters stationed near a Turkish tank near the village of Kaklijah, 2 miles east of the city.

Ali added that rebels were now on the eastern and northern outskirts of the city, but were waiting for engineering crews to deal with any explosive devices deployed on the road, a signature tactic by the jihadist group. 

Decades ago, Jarablus was a tranquil city on the Euphrates, home to an archaeological site once excavated by T.E. Lawrence (known as Lawrence of Arabia). It was taken over by Islamic State in 2013.

The city became an important way station for the group’s movement in and out of its areas in Syria; jihadists would often post pictures of themselves lounging at the nearby Karkamis border crossing, their presence tolerated by a Turkish government that saw them as a powerful deterrent to the increasing power of a Syrian Kurdish militia, the People’s Protection Units or YPG.

Ankara fears the YPG aims to create an autonomous Kurdish entity on Syrian soil, which would encourage Turkey’s own Kurdish population to seek separation as well. 

The loss of Jarablus would mark the end of Islamic State presence near the 500-mile Syrian Turkish border.

In recent weeks, the YPG  —  which the U.S. has bolstered with airstrikes and special forces support as its primary anti-Islamic State ground force in Syria — routed Islamic State from Manbij, roughly 19 miles south of Jarablus. The U.S. touted the operation as a success, but Ankara saw it as another step towards the linking of Kurdish-controlled areas along the Syrian-Turkish border; the YPG holds sway over a 170-mile swath of land extending from Syria’s northeastern tip to the town of Kobani as well as part of Aleppo province. 

The Jarablus offensive is a way to “drive a wedge between these two Kurdish-controlled areas,” said Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul-based security analyst and senior fellow at the Silk Roads Studies Program.

“Jarablus was expected to fall soon anyway and that the Kurds would move in to take it,” he said.

The offensive was a show of force for Ankara, Jenkins explained, that would demonstrate it could still function effectively against security threats, especially after a suicide attack on Monday widely blamed on Islamic State in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, which killed 54 people.

But “it won’t stop Islamic State conducting more bomb attacks inside Turkey. In some ways, it can increase the risk,” he said. 

Bulos is a special correspondent. Umar Farooq in Istanbul contributed to this report.

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Turkish military and Syrian rebels storm border city held by Islamic State