Turkish army backs operations to take ISIL-held town

The Turkish military backed operations to take a northern Syrian town along the Turkish border controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) by shelling their targets on Aug. 23, after mortar shells and rockets hit two Turkish provinces.

Turkey’s shelling came as activists said hundreds of Ankara-backed rebels were preparing an offensive against ISIL to seize control of Jarablus, a town located just across from the southeastern Turkish province of Gaziantep’s Karkamış town.

Since late on Aug. 22, multiple mortar shells have fallen inside Karkamış, fired from ISIL positions in Jarablus. No one has been injured in the attacks.

Turkish howitzers launched retaliatory fire at ISIL positions, while the local municipality called on citizens not to leave their houses, Doğan News Agency reported. Police investigated the places where ISIL mortar shells landed inside Turkey.

Turkish artillery responded to the fire on Karkamış by hitting four ISIL positions around the jihadist-controlled Syrian town of Jarablus with around 60 shells.

Shelling from ISIL positions further west along the border also erupted on Aug. 22, when three rockets fired from an ISIL-held area in northwestern Syria crash landed in the city center of the southern Turkish province of Kilis. No one was injured in the attacks, after which Turkish artillery retaliated.

Citizens in Kilis were wary after the rockets landed in their city as a total of 21 people were killed in cross-border attacks by ISIL between January and May this year.

Multiple tanks, armored vehicles and heavy armed forces from the Gaziantep brigade were sent to the border.

Rami Abdul Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the “Turkish shelling in Syria aimed to prevent the advance of troops backed by Kurds from Manbij towards Jarablus.”