Clashes between Turkish-backed Syrian rebels and ISIL fighters have intensified around the northern Syrian town of Al-Bab, resulting in the deaths of 16 Turkish soldiers, the military`s highest single-day toll of its four-month campaign inside the country.<\/p>\n
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Wednesday`s battles, in which another 33 Turkish soldiers were wounded and 138 ISIL members were also killed, were some of the deadliest yet in Turkey`s Euphrates Shield operation in northern Syria, according to the army.<\/p>\n
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“The operation to control Al-Bab, which is being besieged under the Euphrates Shield Operation, is ongoing,” the army said in a statement.<\/p>\n
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The military had said earlier that rebel forces, which have been launching attacks on ISIL fighters in Al-Bab for weeks, had largely established control over the strategic area around the town`s hospital.<\/p>\n
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“Once this area has been seized, Daesh`s dominance of Al-Bab will to a large extent be broken,” it said in an earlier statement on Wednesday, using an Arabic acronym for the group.<\/p>\n
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Aleppo victory<\/p>\n
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ISIL was using suicide bombers and vehicle-borne explosives intensively, the Turkish military said.<\/p>\n
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Turkey`s military was pressing on with the operation after its foreign minister and his Russian and Iranian counterparts said in Moscow on Tuesday that they were ready to help broker a deal to end Syria`s almost six-year-old war.<\/p>\n
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The talks came as Syrian government forces neared their biggest victory in the conflict, closing in on the last rebel enclave in the city of Aleppo.<\/p>\n
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About 30 Turkish soldiers have been killed in the course of Euphrates Shield, which was launched to push ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, and a Kurdish militia away from Syria`s border with Turkey.<\/p>\n
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Turkish air strikes on Wednesday destroyed 67 ISIL targets, the military said.<\/p>\n
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The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based war monitor, reported fierce clashes at the southwestern edges of Al-Bab, with some rebel advances there.<\/p>\n
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It said that Turkish air strikes in the area had killed seven people in Al-Bab and that 15 Turkish-backed rebels had been killed in fighting on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
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The Euphrates Shield operation is largely focused on combating ISIL, but Turkey is also determined to prevent the Kurdish YPG fighters, which it sees as a hostile force, from linking cantons it controls along the border.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Clashes between Turkish-backed Syrian rebels and ISIL fighters have intensified around the northern Syrian town of Al-Bab, resulting in the deaths of 16 Turkish soldiers, the military`s highest single-day toll of its four-month campaign inside the country. Wednesday`s battles, in which another 33 Turkish soldiers were wounded and 138 ISIL members were also killed, were some of the deadliest yet in Turkey`s Euphrates Shield operation in northern Syria, according to the army. “The operation to control Al-Bab, which is being besieged under the Euphrates Shield Operation, is ongoing,”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4853,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4852"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4854,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4852\/revisions\/4854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}