US dismisses claims of creating ‘safe zone’ for northern Syria

Talks about creating a ‘safe zone’ in northern Syria, which reportedly surfaced in the recent breakthrough deal between the US and Turkey on the fight against the Islamic State, has been dismissed by US officials who insist there is no such plan as of now.

Several highly placed US administrative officials told reporters on Tuesday afternoon that even though the Turkish government has repeatedly insisted on creating a ‘safe zone’ or a ‘no-fly zone’ in northern Syria, the US government has not agreed to it and is not calling for such an arrangement.

“We are not out there staking out zones," said one senior administration official, Fox News reported. "That is just not what is happening, we are going after ISIL wherever we can find them, once we get our aircraft planning done, you are going to see a lot of results."

When asked about the basic outline of the deal with Turkey, one of the senior officials also said that the US has just started the talks and that planning is at too early a stage to disclose specific details, Fox News reported. To date, the missions against the rebel groups from Incirlik Air Base as well as other bases in Turkey with US military presence have consisted only of reconnaissance flights over Syria from drones without arms. According to one of the officials, this trend is about to change and the agreement up to this point, he said, only focuses on heightening the efforts.

According to Bloomberg View, three senior administrative officials told reporters on Tuesday that the current operations will focus on eliminating Islamic State forces from the 68 mile stretch of the Turkey-Syria border. However, no agreement has been reached on protecting the civilians, holding population areas or even ensuring that Assad’s air force doesn’t attack the area.

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