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Turkish army close to taking ISIS-held town, Erdogan says
President Erdogan says Turkey's military incursion into northern Syria aims to cleanse a 5,000sq km 'safe zone'
Turkey-backed opposition fighters advance in an armoured personnel carrier outside the northern Syrian city of al-Bab during a drive to retake control from the Islamic State group
Turkish troops backed by Syrian rebel fighters have entered the centre of the Islamic State group bastion of Al-Bab and will soon capture it, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday.
The town in Syria's Aleppo province is the last stronghold of the terrorist group in the region, and has also been targeted by Syrian government forces.
Erdogan said the final goal of a Turkish incursion into northern Syria is to clear a 5,000sq-km "safe zone", vowing to press on towards ISIS's self-declared capital in the country, Raqqa.
"After Al-Bab is about to be over, the period following that will be Manbij and Raqqa," Erdogan told journalists before his departure on an official visit to Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
"We shared our thoughts with the new US administration and CIA and we will follow the developments in line with our stance," he added.
"The ultimate goal is to establish a safe zone by cleansing a 4,000 to 5,000sq km area from the terrorists."
The Syrian opposition, meanwhile, announced the formation of a delegation to attend a new round of UN-sponsored peace talks in Geneva on 20 February.
ISIS has come under pressure from simultaneous offensives in both Syria and Iraq, where the group seized large swathes of territory in 2014 and proclaimed an Islamic "caliphate".
Erdogan, speaking in Istanbul, said Al-Bab "is now besieged from all fronts".
"Our forces entered the centre," he added, saying it was "only a matter of time" before the alliance of Turkish forces and rebels took control of the town.
"Daesh forces have begun leaving Al-Bab completely," he said, using an Arabic acronym for ISIS.
Turkish forces and allied rebels entered Al-Bab for the first time on Saturday, from the west, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The Britain-based monitor reported heavy clashes inside western Al-Bab on Sunday, as well as on the northern edge of the town, where Turkish forces and rebels were advancing but had not yet entered.
One Turkish soldier was killed and two soldiers wounded in clashes with ISIS, the Turkish Dogan news agency reported.
That raised to 67 the number of Turkish soldiers killed since Ankara began Operation Euphrates Shield in August, targeting both ISIS and the Kurdish YPG militia.
