Raqqa offensive should start after end of Mosul, Euphrates Shield ops: Turkish deputy PM

The operation to liberate Syria's Raqqa from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) should start after operations to retake Mosul from jihadists and Turkey's Euphrates Shield Operation end, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş said Oct. 31. 

"Turkey's idea on a Raqqa operation is clear. We are for [an operation] in Raqqa to be made consisting of the people of Raqqa. It is our opinion that it will be the correct thing to conduct [the Raqqa operation] - both militarily and strategically - after the Mosul and Euphrates Shield operations end," he said.

Kurtulmuş made the comments after a cabinet meeting that was convened under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at his palace in Ankara.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Oct. 25 that an attack on Raqqa would start while the battle of Mosul in neighboring Iraq was still unfolding.

Iraqi security forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters started the offensive on Iraq's Mosul on Oct. 17, with air and ground support from the U.S.-led coalition against the hardline Sunni group of ISIL.

Advancing Iraq troops broke through ISIL defense lines in an eastern suburb of Mosul on Oct. 31, taking the battle for the insurgent stronghold to inside the city limits for the first time, a force commander said. 

They made the gain as the offensive to recapture Mosul - the largest military operation in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003 - entered its third week. 

Commanders had warned earlier that the battle for the city, the hardline militants' de facto capital in Iraq, could take weeks and possibly months. 

Troops of the Iraqi army's Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) moved forward on Gogjali, an industrial zone on the...