Turkey rolls tanks into Syria to free town held by IS

TURKISH troops and tanks entered Syria early yesterday in a push against Islamic State fighters controlling the town of Jarablus.

The advance to drive the jihadists out came after airstrikes and shelling of the area, regarded as the terror group’s last major centre on the 500-mile border between the two countries.

Turkish-backed Syrian rebels accompanied the Turkish troops as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed that the operation was also aimed at Kurdish fighters.

Earlier this week, Turkey shelled Syrian Kurdish forces in the same area as it does not want them to ‘fill a vacuum’ if IS is forced out of the region. It fears the Kurds could create an autonomous area close to the border.

The Turkish government maintained yesterday that the advance on the border town was an act of ‘self-defence’ after a number of IS attacks.

In the latest, which Mr Erdogan blames on the jihadists, 54 people, including 29 children, were killed in the bombing of a wedding party in the town of Gaziantep.

The advance on Jarablus came as US vice-president Joe Biden arrived in Turkey yesterday with relations between the two countries strained after an attempted coup last month.

More than two million refugees have been driven into Turkey because of the war in Syria.