Friday, Mar 29, 2024 | Last Update : 12:12 PM IST

  Turkey: 104 ISIS militants killed in air, land strikes

Turkey: 104 ISIS militants killed in air, land strikes

AP/AFP
Published : May 29, 2016, 12:44 am IST
Updated : May 29, 2016, 12:44 am IST

Turkey’s state-run news agency said US-led coalition airstrikes and Turkish artillery fire against the ISIS group in Syria have killed 104 militants.

Turkey’s state-run news agency said US-led coalition airstrikes and Turkish artillery fire against the ISIS group in Syria have killed 104 militants.

The Anadolu agency on Saturday said the strikes came late on Friday, hours after rockets fired from Syria hit a southern Turkish town and wounded five people.

It said the airstrikes and artillery fire also destroyed seven buildings used as ISIS headquarters. The claim could not be independently verified, and Turkey has not explained how it can count casualties in Syria.

Cross-border fire from Syria has claimed 21 lives and wounded dozens of others in the border town of Kilis in 2016.

Authorities blame the attacks on ISIS which has a presence in northern Syria. Turkey typically responds by shelling ISIS positions.

Meanwhile, heavy fighting between ISIS and rebels gripped a town in northeastern Syria on Saturday, a monitor and an activist said, after a lightning assault by the jihadists cut a main supply route.

“Heavy clashes took place overnight between ISIS fighters and rebels inside the walls of Marea town,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

ISIS swept through rebel-held territory early on Friday in a shock offensive in Aleppo province, cutting off the main road between Marea and Azaz, 20 kilometres to the northeast near the Turkish border. The surprise advance came as the jihadist group faced an offensive by a US-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance in its own heartland of Raqa province further east.

Maamoun Khateeb, a journalist from Azaz, said that ISIS attacked Marea early on Saturday mainly from the east and north using tanks and two car bombs. The advance has besieged around 15,000 residents remaining inside Marea, he said.

Location: Turkey, Ankara