Turkish forces and their Syrian rebel allies have swept into the northwestern Syrian town of Afrin, raising their flags in the town centre and declaring full control after an eight-week campaign to drive out Kurdish YPG forces.
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A spokesman for the rebel fighters said they entered Afrin before dawn on Sunday, meeting no resistance. A war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said pockets of YPG fighters defied orders to withdraw, but Turkish forces were in control.
Ankara says Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters are an extension of a militant group waging an insurgency inside Turkey, and vowed to crush what it described as a "terror corridor" of YPG-controlled territory along Turkey's southern border with Syria.
It launched its campaign eight weeks ago and has threatened to extend the offensive to another Kurdish-controlled region further east where US forces are stationed alongside the YPG, Washington's ally against Islamic State in Syria.
"Afrin city centre is under control as of 8:30 this morning," Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told a rally commemorating the World War One Gallipoli campaign, adding that Turkish and Free Syrian Army flags had been raised in the town centre.
"Most of the terrorists have already fled with tails between their legs. Our special forces and members of the Free Syrian Army are cleaning the remains and the traps they left behind," Erdogan said. "In the centre of Afrin, symbols of trust and stability are waving instead of rags of terrorists."
An official from the local Kurdish authority said Kurdish forces were present across the Afrin region and would "strike the positions of the Turkish enemy and its mercenaries at every opportunity".
"Our forces all over Afrin will become a constant nightmare for them," Othman Sheikh Issa, co-chair of the Afrin executive council, said in a televised statement.
Turkey's armed forces said that troops were combing the streets for mines and improvised explosive devices.
Free Syrian Army spokesman Mohammad al-Hamadeen said the fighters entered the town from the north, east and west. Kurdish forces had pulled back to Syrian government-controlled areas around the city of Aleppo, or to the Kurdish-held region east of the Euphrates river, he said.
"Maybe (Afrin) will be cleared by the end of the day -- it's empty of fighters, they cleared out," Hamadeen told Reuters.
Turkey's government spokesman Bekir Bozdag said the military campaign would continue to secure areas around Afrin and make sure food and medicine were available.
More than 150,000 people fled Afrin in recent days, the Syrian Observatory said, as Turkey pressed on with its campaign despite a UN Security Council call for a 30-day ceasefire across Syria.
Australian Associated Press