“Good news! The al-Bab operation is over,” Turkey’s Daily Sabah reported Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar telling reporters on Thursday. Akar reportedly claimed that clearing efforts were underway in the area.
His pronouncement comes two days after Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that al-Bab was “largely” under control of Syrian rebels being backed by the Turkish military.
Turkey’s Defense Minister Fikri Isik said on Thursday that al-Bab is now “completely surrounded. A serious cleaning operation is being done inside [the town],” according to the state-run Anadolu Agency. He described the operations in central al-Bab as “intense.”
Other sources, however, have given reports that contradict the Turkish claims.
On Wednesday, the conflict monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that al-Bab was still “almost entirely” under ISIS control.
The same day, a rebel spokesperson said that they were in control of 40 percent of the town and were making slow progress against ISIS whose militants were “still dug-in inside al-Bab,” Haithem Hamour, spokesperson for the Free Syrian Army’s al-Jabha a-Shamiyah, told the news outlet Syria Direct.
The Observatory reported continued clashes in the al-Bab area on Thursday, noting that Turkish forces and their local allies “are still unable to take control” of the town.
In Turkish efforts to take the town, “ongoing” airstrikes have killed 24 civilian people in the last 24 hours including 11 children and 8 women, the Observatory reported.
The Turkish military announced their allied Free Syrian Army (FSA) had killed eight to ten ISIS suicide bombers south of al-Bab on Wednesday, Hurriyet Daily News reported, while Anadolu reported that seven FSA fighters were killed in a suicide car bomb explosion.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said earlier this week that he does not want to see Turkish troops lose momentum in al-Bab.
“After removing Daesh, the YPG [Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units] and the PYD [Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party] from the region and getting Daesh [ISIS] out of Raqqa, it will be too much of a luxury for us to stay there,” Erdogan said. “But it is currently too early to talk about such issues.”
“There will be no stop after al-Bab. There might be a problem of communication there. The capital of Daesh is not al-Bab, but Raqqa. The ultimate goal is to cleanse a 5,000 square-kilometer area,” he added.
Sixty-four Turkish troops have been killed since Ankara launched its Euphrates Shield operation in northern Syria in August 2016.
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