Islamic State pushed back from Syrian border after three-year presence

Cairo: Islamic State has lost its last link between its main territories and the outside world as Syrian rebels backed by Turkish tanks and airstrikes captured the last stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border held by the extremist group.

Rebel forces advancing west from the town of Jarablus and east from al-Rai captured the last border villages held by Islamic State Sunday afternoon, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and rebel groups involved in the offensive.

Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency confirmed the development, which puts an end to more than three years of Islamic State presence on the border.

Islamic State used the area, north-east of Aleppo, to bring foreign fighters into its territories in Iraq and Syria.

A Turkish tank on its way to the Syrian border.Credit: AP

Its recruitment rocketed as it gained ground in the Syrian civil war from 2013 on, and then captured large parts of northern and western Iraq in in June 2014.

But it lost most of its border territory to Kurdish-led Syrian forces backed by US-led airstrikes who forced it from parts of north-eastern Syria after defeating it in the battle for the border town of Kobane in 2015.

The US saw that campaign, spearheaded by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (known as the YPG), as key to isolating the extremist group's de facto Syrian capital of Raqqa and disrupting its supply lines.

Islamic State's links to the outside world have now finally been severed by Turkey's first ground offensive inside Syria, backing rebel groups aligned with Ankara.

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.Credit: AP

Turkey has said the offensive, which when Jarablus fell to its rebel allies last month with little resistance, is aimed at both Islamic State and the YPG.

It launched the operation shortly after the YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces captured the town of Manbij, south of Jarablus, from Islamic State.

Turkey, which distrusts the Kurdish-led forces due to their links with banned Kurdish rebels operating on its own territory, feared that the capture of Manbij would lead to the Kurds advancing further west and linking up with an enclave they control in the far north-west of Syria.

That would have left Ankara facing a Kurdish entity spanning most of its southern border.

At the G20 summit in Hangzhou, French President Francois Hollande said he told Russian President Vladimir Putin that "nothing would be worse than the partition of Syria", and urged him to move towards negotiations to end the country's civil war.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday ended a series of meetings in Hangzhou without arriving at a cease-fire agreement.

This is the second time in two weeks that Mr Kerry and Mr Lavrov have failed to reach an agreement. The previous time they met was in Geneva on August 26.

DPA, Bloomberg, Reuters