Jarabulus

Turkish troops will not remain in Syria once the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is defeated and they will leave the lands to their "true owners," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said, while vowing to advance the ongoing Euphrates Shield operation to Raqqa after al-Bab.

I started the day with a question from a colleague about the situation in al-Bab. I have also been looking for an answer for days during talks with generals, ambassadors and representatives of the groups in the field. 

Turkish troops seized an explosive-packed vehicle prepared for an attack on a Turkish military convoy in the northern Syrian city of Jarablus last week, the army announced on Jan. 28.      

The bomb-laden car was seized on Jan. 21 and departed from the Manbij area on the western banks of the Euphrates River, according to a General Staff statement.      

When Turkey intervened in northern Syria five months ago, it claimed it had no designs on its former Ottoman dominion and that its only goals were to cleanse its borders of the Islamic State and to eliminate what it called the terrorist threat posed by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the US-allied Kurdish militia that is paradoxically the most effective force against the jihadis.

A new Syrian police force trained and equipped by Turkey started work on Jan. 24 in the rebel-held border town of Jarablus, from which Turkey helped drive out Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants in recent months.

Turkey will not hand over control of Al-Bab to the Bashar al-Assad regime after it clears the town of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadists, Deputy Prime Minister Kurtulmuş has stated.

"Al-Bab belongs to the people of Al -Bab," Kurtulmuş told state-run Anadolu Agency, stressing that local people must be in charge of running the town, as in Jarablus.  

Turkey will start reconstructing infrastructures in the area between Jarablus and al-Rai in northern Syria, which has been cleared of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as part of Turkey's ongoing Euphrates Shield operation. 

A total of 46 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants were "neutralized" and 16 others were injured in northern Syria over the last 24 hours as part of the Euphrates Shield operation, the Turkish Military said early on Jan. 21. 

Five Turkish soldiers were killed and nine others were wounded in an Islamic State Iraq and Levant (ISIL) attack in the al-Bab area of northern Syria on Jan. 20, according to the Turkish army.

The attack was staged with a bomb-laden vehicle by ISIL militants at 1:40 p.m. Wounded soldiers were taken to hospital immediately, said a written statement from the Turkish Armed Forces.

The total number of the "neutralized" militants in northern Syria since the ongoing Turkey-led Operation Euphrates Shield was launched last Aug., is at least 2,085, according to the latest data of the Turkish military. 

1,775 of these neutralized are ISIL militants, the weekly statement of the Turkish general staff said.