Turkish tanks backed by fighter jets and special forces alongside Syrian Rebels rolled into Syria Wednesday in an unprecedented operation to drive Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, IS and Daesh) out of a key Syrian border town of Jarabulus in Aleppo.
The operation named "Euphrates Shield" began at around 4:00 am local time (0100 GMT) and Turkish artillery and fighter jets pounding dozens of ISIS targets around Jarabulus. US-led coalition warplanes, also hit targets inside Syria.
Dozen Turkish tanks and 1,500 Syrian rebel crossed Turkey border and now are in the Syria.
Tensions had flared across the Syria-Turkey border on Tuesday following rocket fire from Jarabulus which landed inside Turkey.
Turkish-led forces captured village of Keklijah five kilometres (3 miles) west of Jarabulus as a first success.
Syrian Rebel commander Ahmad Othman told AFP in Beirut by phone that the first stage of the operation had been completed and his forces were now one kilometre from Jarabulus. "The second stage will begin in a few hours," he said.
In other side Saleh Moslem, the head of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the YPG's political wing, tweeted that Turkey was now in the "Syrian quagmire" and would be "defeated" like ISIS.
FOOTAGE shows Turkish Special Forces units and jets, supported by warplanes from the U.S.-led coalition, took off from Turkey's Incirlik air base on Wednesday (August 24) at the start of an operation in northern Syria. Also ISIS forces in Syria fired a mortar shell into Turkey on Wednesday (August 24), hitting an empty field, witnesses reported, in what appeared to be retaliation for Turkish air strikes near the town of Jarablus.
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