Turkey says IS 'moving from' al-Bab, as soldier dies

ERBIL, Kurdistan (Kurdistan24) – Turkey’s Defense Minister Fikri Isik on Sunday said the Islamic State (IS) was moving back in parts of the northern Syrian town of al-Bab where a Turkish soldier was killed in clashes.

“There is currently some [IS] movements that we closely watch. Maybe it would be an exaggeration to say they are retreating, but there are some changes in their locations,” Isik said.

Isik’s comment relayed by Kurdistan24’s Ankara Bureau came as the Turkish Army announced the killing of at least one soldier and the wounding of two more as a result of an IS attack in al-Bab.

There was no further information about the type of attack but IS had used car bombs, rockets, and VBIEDs to target Turkish forces in the past.

Since November 2016, the advance of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Turkish military that supports them had been stalled by stiff IS resistance at the gates of al-Bab just 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of the Turkish border.

With the latest casualties, the number of Turkish soldiers killed in the Syrian campaign, which began smoothly at first with August 2016’s capture of the border town of Jarablus, rose to 46.

Last week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan moderated the goal of his army’s costly and time-consuming incursion dubbed Operation Euphrates Shield to the capture of al-Bab.

The Turkish leadership previously set its eyes on the Kurdish-held town of Manbij, east of al-Bab.

Additionally, they even declared the de facto IS capital of Raqqa, which the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are already encircling, as a target.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany