Turkey and Syria Resecure Border, Cut ISIS Off From Outside World

The Free Syrian Army’s advance shut down ISIS’s key supply lines to bring in foreign fighters and ammunition.

Turkish tanks head to the Syrian border, in Karkamis, Turkey. (Photo: AP) 

Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels expelled the Islamic State group from the last strip of territory it controlled along the Syrian-Turkish border on Sunday, effectively sealing the extremists’ self-styled caliphate off from the outside world, Turkey’s prime minister said.

Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army rebels have cleared the area between the northern Syrian border towns of Azaz and Jarablus, Turkey’s prime minister Binali Yildirim said.

From Azaz to Jarablus, 91 kilometers of our border has completely secured. All the terrorist organisations are pushed back, they are gone

Binali Yildirim, Prime Minister of Turkey

The FSA’s advance shut down key supply lines used by IS to bring in foreign fighters, weapons and ammunition.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said IS “has lost its link with the outside world after losing all border areas” with Turkey. It said the last two border villages that IS held–Mizab and Qadi Jarablus–were both taken by Turkey on Sunday afternoon.

IS had occupied the border area even before it declared its self-styled caliphate in June 2014, and it used the Turkish border to bring in fighters from around the world. The extremist group, which controls parts of Syria and Iraq, is now surrounded from all sides by hostile forces.

The loss of its territory along the Turkish border follows a series of recent defeats for IS, including its expulsion from the central Iraqi city of Fallujah and its defeat in the former stronghold of Manbij in northern Syria.