Syrian government forces and the Turkish military clashed on Tuesday for the first time since Ankara launched an offensive in northeastern Syria three weeks ago, a war monitor said according to telegraph.co.uk.

“Heavy fighting erupted for the first time between the Syrian and Turkish armies,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

The Britain-based monitoring group said artillery and machinegun fire was exchanged near the village of Assadiya, south of the border town of Ras al-Ain.

At least six Syrian soldiers were wounded in the fighting, the Observatory said.

The Turkish military and its Syrian proxies attacked Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria on October 9 with the aim of creating a roughly 30-kilometre (20-mile) deep buffer zone.

Kurdish forces agreed to withdraw from a 120-kilometre (75 mile) long, Arab-majority segment of the 440-kilometre (275-mile) border zone, although clashes have been reported since.

Turkey subsequently reached a deal with the Syrian government’s main backer Russia for Kurdish forces to pull back from the entire border area.

Left in the lurch by a US troop withdrawal from the border area, Kurdish forces turned to the government for protection.

Government forces are now expected to deploy along much of the border zone but a 10-kilometre-deep strip is to be jointly patrolled by Russian and Turkish troops, starting from Tuesday.

A series of clashes between Islamic State insurgents and Iranian-backed Hashd al-Shaabi militias in the disputed Iraqi province of Diyala on Sunday resulted in several casualties on both sides, according to reports.

Local media reports quoted security sources as saying that Islamic State sleeper agents launched a “major attack” against an outpost of the Hashd al-Shaabi – also known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) – and wounded four militiamen. The PMF militias in question were part of First Brigade, which includes the Badr Organization.

The incident reportedly occurred in Diyala province’s Khanaqin district in a rural area close to a religious shrine known as Baba Mahmoud. The location is near Mount Murawid, the rugged terrain common in the region that sleeper cells of terrorist groups often exploit to establish bases for their operations.

The so-called Islamic State later claimed responsibility for what seemed to be other attacks that had taken place southeast of Khanaqin in the Naft Khana region, which is close to an oilfield. The terrorist organization claimed to have killed at least four PMF fighters and wounded several others in three separate attacks.

The PMF then claimed it had initiated a counterattack against insurgents in the area, killing three Islamic State members, as per preliminary casualty numbers.

Reports indicate a general uptick in the number of sporadic attacks the terrorist organization has carried out over the past month.

Such assaults usually occur close to areas the Islamic State once controlled, mainly targeting Shia militias and Iraqi security forces. Diyala seems to be bearing the brunt of these terror activities.

These attacks come even as the US on Sunday announced they had killed the group’s purported leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in an operation in northwestern Syria.

Senior Kurdistan Region leaders have warned that international governments need to use as much vigilance as ever in facing the remnants of the Islamic State.

Up to 100 ISIS members escaped Al Hol camp in eastern Syria on Wednesday, as concerns over the security of prisons under Kurdish control grew a week into a Turkish offensive in north-east Syria, like reported by thenational.ae.

A western diplomatic source told The National that dozens escaped from the camp’s “annex”, where many of the most dangerous, foreign ISIS members are held.

The camp has a population of more than 60,000, most of whom are displaced people from Iraq and Syria.

Yet more than 10,000 foreign women and children are also housed in the secure annex. The source did not give the escapees’ nationalities.

Meanwhile the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Mohamed Al Hakim, announced the country would take back Iraqi ISIS suspects held in the custody of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

There has been a wave of attempted breakouts from prisons holding ISIS suspects since Turkey’s “Operation Peace Spring” began last Wednesday.

ISIS-affiliated channels on Telegram said the two Belgian extremists believed to have who escaped Kurdish custody last week were Mohammed Botachbaqut and Yassine Cheikhki.

A spokesman for the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army said that some of the estimated 785 ISIS members who escaped an Ain Issa camp on Sunday were now in their custody in a village close to Tel Abyad.

On Wednesday, The Telegraph tracked two high-profile female ISIS members, Toba Gondal and Lisa Smith, to the village.

The French government confirmed that nine French citizens were among those who escaped.

ISIS also claimed another jailbreak near Raqqa on Wednesday during a raid on a “PKK headquarters”.

The formerly US-backed SDF is holding up to 2,000 foreign ISIS fighters in custody, as well as thousands of women and children, in camps and prisons that have been thrown into disarray over the past week.

Iran will start the construction of a second unit at its nuclear reactor in Bushehr next month, the spokesman of its atomic energy organization announced on Tuesday, October 15.

Iran’s only nuclear reactor was built by Russia and is not a controversial part of its nuclear program. It produces electricity and its spent fuel is shipped out of the country to Russia.

In 2014, Iran signed an agreement with Russia to build a second unit at Bushehr and the start of the project was inaugurated the following year.

The spokesman, Behrouz Kamalvandi said pouring of concrete at the site is due to start in one month.

Tehran says it is also planning to start building a third unit in 2021. The head of Iran’s atomic energy organization, Ali Akbar Salehi has said the second unit will be built in six years and the third unit in eight years.

However, the completion of the first Bushehr reactor by Russia had a 12-year delay. It is not clear if that was because of technical issues or political reasons.

All the three units together are expected to generate 3.000 megawatts of electricity.

The United States announced nearly one year ago that its sanctions on Iran do not affect operations at the Bushehr reactor.

Turkish artillery is pounding suspected Syrian Kurdish positions near a town in northeast Syria as Turkey’s military incursion enters its seventh day, like reported by apnews.com.

An Associated Press journalist on Tuesday reported heavy bombardment of targets in the countryside of Ras al Ayn, days after Turkey announced that it had captured the border town. Turkish jets also carried out at least one airstrike.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, reported Kurdish fighters had retaken the town.

A Turkish military official denied reports that Turkey had begun an assault on the Kurdish-held town of Manbij, without giving further detail.

Meanwhile, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan defended Turkey’s offensive in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, calling on the international community to support the initiative or “begin admitting refugees” from Syria.

Hundreds of Daesh supporters have escaped a camp in northern Syria as Turkish forces battle to take a Kurdish-held border town, like reported by metro.news.

Is is believed up to 950 people absconded from Ain Issa, which had a population of around 12,000 — including 1,000 wives and widows of Daesh fighters and their children.

They are said to have escaped after attacking guards and storming the gates while clashes took place between Syrian fighters backed by Turkey and Kurdish forces.

Jelal Ayaf, an official at the camp 20 miles south of the border, said 859 people escaped from the section housing foreigners and described the situation as ‘very volatile’.

A few were recaptured but supporters inside the other section of the camp also escaped and were carrying out attacks, he added.

Five Daesh prisoners were able to escape during a mortar strike outside Qamishili. The UN has said more than 130,000 Syrians have also fled since the Turkish operation against the Kurds began last week, including many who had taken refuge from previous rounds of fighting in the country’s eight-year civil war.

It came after president Donald Trump agreed to move US forces aside, despite the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces being a major ally in the war against Daesh.

A US military official said the situation in north-eastern Syria was ‘deteriorating rapidly’ and American forces were cut off from the Syrian Kurdish fighters.

American troops on the ground were at risk of being ‘isolated’ and cannot travel overland without a ‘high risk’ of armed confrontation with Turkey-backed forces, the official added.

Turkey’s defence ministry yesterday said its forces had taken control of the road between Hassakeh and Ain Issa, a Kurdish administrative centre. Heavy fighting was also under way in the town of Suluk.

Turkey’s official news agency said Syrian fighters allied with Ankara had captured the town, while Kurdish officials said they were still battling to hold on to it.

Meanwhile last night, Syrian government troops were said by state media to be moving north to confront the Turkish-led invasion.

Iraq is deploying troops to areas along its border with Syria that are affected by the Turkish military incursion into the northern part of the country to block Islamic State insurgents from crossing into Iraqi territories, a security source told Kurdistan 24.

“There are movements to secure the 325-kilometer border” between the neighboring countries from the Iraqi side, the source said, on condition of anonymity. He added that the provincial security forces of Nineveh and Anbar—the only two Iraqi provinces that border Syria—are on alert.

Earlier on Sunday, he said, “Nineveh’s governor made a visit to the Rabia border crossing to study the situation.” The crossing is located in the northern part of Nineveh province and is manned on the Syrian side by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) who are currently under attack from the north by Turkish forces.

Baghdad has yet to issue an official statement on the matter, but the move would follow assessments of the situation currently unfolding in northern and northeastern Syria, where Kurdish-led forces are based. Turkish ground troops, artillery fire, and aerial bombardment, as well as Turkish-backed Syrian Islamist groups, have slaughtered dozens of people and caused the displacement over two hundred thousand civilians.

The long-threatened Turkish invasion began on Wednesday with the purported aim of confronting the Kurdish military leadership of the SDF, the Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG), whom Ankara considers terrorists for alleged connections with the of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The PKK have led a decades-long insurgency inside Turkey for expanded Kurdish rights.

Ankara’s military campaign came after the White House withdrew American forces from strategic areas in northern Syria following a phone call between US President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Pentagon announced on Sunday it would remove its remaining troops in Syria.

Established to counter the so-called Islamic State, the SDF, backed by air support of the international anti-Islamic State coalition, was the leading ground force in Syria that freed close to a third of the country’s territory from the terrorist organization’s brutal rule. Made up of a diverse group of fighters, the SDF lost some 11,000 members in the fight against the extremist group.

As the SDF took back the last sliver of “caliphate” land in the eastern town of Baghouz in March, Iraq put up reinforcements on its side of the border to prevent fleeing militants from crossing into Anbar province.

Now, as Turkey pounds positions close to where Islamic State members and families are held, fears are mounting that they will have the opportunity to scatter to Iraq or join Turkish-backed militant groups. The security source told Kurdistan 24 that Baghdad is again strengthening its border presence to counteract possible infiltrations.

“The aim of the deployments is to secure the border in anticipation of the influx of Syrian refugees and also to deter any attempts by ISIS fugitives to infiltrate Nineveh.”

The international community, including the US Congress, has largely condemned Ankara’s incursion. Leading European powers have vowed to stop arms exports to their NATO ally of Turkey amid worries of war crimes committed by their army and proxy militias in Syria.

Late on Sunday, the SDF announced that it had reached a deal with the Syrian regime—whose indiscriminate killings of its citizens nearly a decade ago started the protracted national civil war—and Russia to enter two towns currently under attack to confront Turkish forces and their allies.

Turkish jihadist forces in Syria murdered two Kurdish prisoners and shot down a woman politician during Turkey’s offensive in Syria on Saturday. The reports have shocked observers of Turkey, a NATO member, and the increasingly brutal campaign it is waging in Syria.

In one incident Turkish-backed extremists who are members of an Arab rebel group that is embedded with Turkey’s military operation are accused of murdering Hevrin Khalef, a female politician in eastern Syria. In a second incident the Arab fighters backed by Turkey murdered two Kurdish prisoners, one of them tied up, on a video. Many of the extremists Turkey has recruited to fight in Syria have openly shouted jihadist slogans claiming they are coming to murder the “kuffar” or “infidels.” Their behavior in the fighting has been compared to ISIS.

Turkey has used the Syrian Arab fighters as a way to avoid casualties, unleashing them across the border to attack and murder Kurds after US President Donald Trump announced the US would leave parts of Syria and open the airspace for Turkish airstrikes. Since October 9 Turkey has launched devastating airstrikes across northeast Syria, causing 100,000 to flee an area that was peaceful. US forces, sheltering in place near Kobane, even came under artillery fire. Turkey has sought to send a message that nothing will prevent it from continuing its operation and using Syrian Arab forces as cannon fodder to attack Kurdish areas and sack towns and villages.

The cynical ploy is part of Turkey’s attempt to channel Arab fighters from Idlib and other parts of Syria to use them against the mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces. Turkey has promised them they will be resettled in 140 new towns with 200,000 new homes.

On Saturday the US appeared to also release funds for minorities in eastern Syria, at the same time that the US continued to permit airstrikes on its own SDF partners and in areas where minority Christians and others live. The US has now expressed concern about Turkey’s operation, an operation that it made the way for. NATO has given tacit approval to Turkey, asking only for restraint, and some UN statements have also appeared to approve of Turkey’s attacks, also urging only restraint.

With the videos of executions and murder of a female politician the operation in northern Syria appears designed to sow terror and destruction. Although it has been condemned by some US politicians and some European countries have cut arms sales to Turkey, there appears no clear way to stop the continuing abuses and chaos being unleashed in eastern Syria.

The European countries are trying to speed up the implementation of a plan to transfer thousands of ISIS militants from the camps they are held in Syria to Iraq after the outbreak of new fighting that might have a risk on their escape or return to their countries, like reported by shafaaq.com.

The Europeans represent fifth of ISIS fighters in Syria, as they are about 10,000 held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is under heavy attack from Turkish troops.

If SDF guards send places of detention to the front lines, there is a risk that detainees would flee.

Before the Turkish offensive start, European countries were assessing on how to find a mechanism that could lead to the transfer of foreign fighters from Syria to Iraq for prosecution there on war crimes charges.

European countries do not want to prosecute their nationals on their territory for fear of provoking public outrage and their judicial systems might face struggle in gathering evidence and the risk of renewed militant attacks there.

Iraq has witnessed some of the bloodiest fighting against ISIS and is already sentencing thousands of suspected ISIS members there after Iraqi forces arrested many people during the fall of ISIS strongholds across the country.

Eleven EU judicial experts met for the first time in June to assess their choices and made slow progress, partly because of concerns about the integrity of Iraq’s judiciary.

Diplomatic and government sources say that the Turkish offensive in northern Syria has prompted European countries to speed up negotiations.

A core group of six countries from which most of the fighters held in Kurdish prisons, including France, Britain and Germany, have been pushing to reduce the number of options after ruling out the formation of a special international tribunal as the formation of such a court can take years and is unlikely to win the support of the UN Security Council.

While the last meeting, held on October 11 in Copenhagen, focused on the formation of a joint court of international and Iraqi judges.

These discussions are taking place in parallel with the Government of Baghdad.

Negotiations with Iraq, which also seeks millions of dollars in compensation for accepting European fighters on its soil, are not easy.

Three European diplomats said that talks were continuing with Iraq and there would be strong efforts to speed up those efforts in light of the Turkish offensive, but a deal with Baghdad was still far away.

Turkish warplanes and artillery intensively hit several towns on the third day of the offensive launched on northern Syria, and clashes erupted between Turkish soldiers, their allied Syrian opposition armed groups, and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), reporters said on Friday according to kurdistan24.net.

Turkish jets and artillery struck Syria’s Serekaniye (Ras al Ain in Arabic) and Tal Abyad towns, the two border towns that have been the focus of the offensive, said Kurdistan 24 correspondent in Serekaniye.

Heavy clashes erupted in Serekaniye in the early morning when units of the Turkish army and their allied Syrian rebels attempted to enter the town, but SDF fighters foiled the ground attack, killing dozens of the Turkish-backed Syrian rebels, local sources told Kurdistan 24.

“The Turkish-backed Syrian armed groups tried to take control of the silos and industrial area in addition to the nearby village of Tal Halaf, near the border, but they failed,” Hoshang Hassan, a Syrian Kurdish journalist reporting in the town, said.

“The SDF fighters repelled three ground attacks by the Turkish-backed Syrian armed groups, hundreds of bodies of the Syrian rebels were in the industrial area,” he said.

On the Turkish side, Reuters journalist in Ceylanpinar said a convoy of 20 armored vehicles carrying Turkish-backed Syrian rebels entered Syria on Friday. Some of them made victory signs, shouted “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) and waved Syrian rebel flags as they advanced towards Serekaniye (Ras al Ain in Arabic).

In the town of Tal Abyad, Kurdistan 24 correspondent Redwan Bezar said Turkish artillery resumed shelling the outskirts of the town.

So far, about 70,000 people have been displaced from the area due to the bombardment, acording to local and international organizations.

Reports of casualties from both Turkish and Kurdish sides are still contradicted.

The SDF in a statement released on Friday claimed they killed 262 Turkish-backed Syrian militants in the past two days, including Turkish soldiers, while they lost 22 fighters in addition to dozens of civilians.

Turkey’s Defence Ministry, however, said the Turkish military and its Syrian rebel allies have killed 277 militants in total since the beginning f the operation, while only one Turkish soldier lost his life.