Activists say Syrian planes bomb city of Homs

Turkey has scaled up its cross-border offensive inside northern Syria, launching airstrikes and artillery against both ISIL and Kurdish forces south of the strategic town of Jarablus.

The Turkish army on Wednesday launched the two-pronged cross border offensive against Islamic State (IS) jihadists but also Syrian Kurdish militia detested by Ankara, sending in dozens of tanks and hundreds of troops.

The Observatory, a Britain-based group, said 20 people were killed and 50 wounded in a battle for the village of Jub al-Kousa fought between Turkey with its allies and Kurdish-backed militias.

Two barrel bombs struck minutes apart in a rebel-held part of Aleppo city, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group.

Another faction fighting under the Syrian Democratic Forces banner, the Army of the Revolutionaries, demanded the US -led coalition explain the justification for the Turkish assault, and accused Turkey of supporting hardline Islamist groups, including the formerly Al-Qaeda affiliated Front for the Conquest of Syria.

There was no immediate comment from the YPG, but forces aligned to the Kurdish group had said on Saturday that no Kurdish militia were in areas being targeted by Turkish in the cross-border offensive.

Turkey suffered its first fatality Saturday after a rocket attack on a tank fired by Kurdish forces.

President Tayyip Erdogan was expected to visit the site of that wedding attack in Gaziantep, in southeastern Turkey, later on Sunday to pay his respects to families of the victims. The deployment was the latest phase in Turkey’s military operation inside Syria-codenamed “Euphrates Shield”-to oust IS from the border region and also counter advances by a Kurdish militia opposed by Ankara”.

In another development, a police checkpoint near the airport at Turkey’s south-eastern city of Diyarbakir came under rocket fire on Saturday evening.

Some observers have raised concerns that the push into Jarablus will be used as a bridgehead to take on Kurdish-allied forces that have occupied positions in northern Syria.

Its military intervention has further complicated a conflict that has killed more than 290,000 people and displaced more than half the country’s population since March 2011.

Aleppo has been caught in a bloody circle of violence, with rebels and government forces each promising to unite the divided city.

Global powers have been pushing for 48-hour humanitarian ceasefires in the embattled city and UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura has urged warring parties to announce by Sunday whether they will commit to a pause in the fighting. “The Kurds are the most effective force in fighting terrorism, the United States needs us”.

The Kurdish-led forces “must pull back to the east of the Euphrates”.

Opposition groups have repeatedly called for an end to regime sieges of rebel-held areas, accusing Assad’s government of using “starve or surrender” tactics.

Yesterday, the last rebel fighters were evacuated from the town of Daraya just outside Damascus, under a deal that followed a brutal four-year government siege.