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Units of the army entered on Monday evening Manbij city in Aleppo north-eastern countryside.
Earlier, the Syrian Arab Army entered a large number of villages and towns in the southern, southwestern and northern countryside of Raqqa, al-Tabqa city and its countryside and al-Tabqa military airport, SANA reporter said.
Syria’s army have begun advancing towards the Kurdish-controlled northern towns of Kobani and Manbij on Sunday, the Kurdish-led administration of northeast Syria said, after the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)and Damascus negotiated a deal to prevent further Turkish advances in the area.
With Operation Peace Spring, Turkey aims to clear its border with Syria, to settle the Kurdish-majority area with up to three million, mostly Arab refugees in what opponents call demographic re-engineering.
Two Turkish soldiers were killed in action on Thursday and Friday amid Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring in northern Syria.
Two fallen soldiers, a specialized sergeant and an infantry private, died amid clashes with the People’s Protection Units (YPG) terrorist group, the National Defense Ministry announced Friday.
Turkey launched its long-mooted offensive in northeast Syria on Wednesday, defying an international outcry over the threat posed to US-backed Kurdish forces and the campaign against Islamic State.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the operation – code named Peace Spring – would “eliminate the terror threat towards our country” from Kurdish militants and Islamic State jihadis.
Turkey’s military struck the Syrian-Iraqi border to prevent Kurdish forces using the route to reinforce northeast Syria, as Ankara prepared to attack there following a surprise U.S. troop pullback, Turkish officials told Reuters on Tuesday.
Turkey says it is ready to advance into northeast Syria now that the United States has begun withdrawing troops from the Turkey-Syria frontier in an abrupt policy shift by U.S. President Donald Trump widely criticized in Washington as a betrayal of America’s allies, the Kurds.