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Turkey said on Tuesday it had agreed with the United States on terms for setting up a “safe zone” inside northern Syria as part of their campaign against Islamic State militants, but the US State Department denied there was any such agreement.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu abandoned efforts to build a coalition government on Tuesday, following the failure of talks with the leaders of two smaller parties.

A new Islamic State video is taking aim at Turkey, issuing a call to arms to “conquer Istanbul”.

The country’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu then announced that his Justice and Development (AK) Party’s negotiations with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) ended without an agreement to form a coalition government.

A US drone had last week executed a single lethal airstrike against an ISIS target in Syria but this was the first time manned US fighter jets had carried out raids after taking off from Turkey’s strategically-located Incirlik base.

Under the terms of the constitution, if no government is formed by August 23, Erdoğan must dissolve Davutoğlu’s caretaker cabinet and call on an interim power-sharing government to lead Turkey to a new election in the autumn.

Warplanes pounded 17 targets in the province of Hakkari on Monday and Tuesday, the military said, part of a renewed crackdown on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has waged a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy.

“We continue to monitor these reports closely, and would further stress that any use of chemicals or biological material as a weapon is completely inconsistent with global standards and norms regarding such capabilities”, Baskey said (not that ISIS cares about such things).

Thought it opposes Islamic State, the Nusra Front last month attacked rebels trained as part of a U.S.-led program to bolster insurgents viewed as moderate enough to fight the ultra-hardline group.

The Turkish military said it hit and neutralized 17 “separatists terrorist targets” in Hakkari province, which borders Iran and Iraq.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon said U.S. jets now based at Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey had hit their first targets in Syria, which American officials cheered as a significant step forward.

The group accused the policemen of having links with ISIS and masterminding a bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruc that killed dozens of civilians.

“If America continues to back Turkey’s policies it is possible it will lose the Kurds“, he said.

But it has launched more than 400 strikes against the PKK in and outside Turkey, he said. The government considers the PKK a terrorist organization just like the Islamic State, as do various Western countries.

In further violence, Kurdish rebels attacked an infantry brigade command post in nearby Sirnak province, seriously wounding a soldier who later died in a hospital. Turkish officials blamed the Suruc bombing on a Kurdish follower of Islamic State, and days later unveiled their...