Turkey and the United States will intensify operations aimed at flushing Daesh (the so-called IS) militants from a strip of northern Syria's border with Turkey in the coming days, Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioglu was quoted as saying on Wednesday. The fight against the militants has taken on a new intensity since attacks claimed by the group killed 129 people in Paris last week and a bomb downed a Russian airliner over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula last month, killing 224. Both French and Russian war planes have stepping up airstrikes in Syria. "We will not allow Daesh to continue its presence on our border," Sinirlioglu was quoted as saying by the state-run Anadolu Agency. "We have long continued air operations in that region with the United States ... We have certain plans to terminate the Daesh presence on our border. Once these plans are finalized, our operations will intensify. You will see this in the coming days," he said. US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday his country would start an operation with Turkey to secure the northern Syrian border. "The entire border of northern Syria — 75 percent of it has now been shut off. And we are entering an operation with the Turks to shut off the other remaining 98 km," he said in an interview with CNN. Neither Kerry nor Sinirlioglu gave further details. Both the United States and Turkey, which has the second largest army in the NATO military alliance, have so far ruled out sending any significant number of ground troops into northern Syria. But they have for months been discussing a joint plan of intensified airstrikes to drive Daesh from a strip of border territory just under 100 km long, stretching west from the Syrian town of Jarablus on the banks of the Euphrates roughly to the town of Azaz. They hope that by sweeping Daesh from this border zone in collaboration with Syrian opposition forces on the ground, they can deprive the group of a smuggling route which has seen its ranks swollen with foreign fighters and its coffers boosted by illicit trade. 3-day Raqqa strikes kill 33 Daesh fighters A Syrian activist group says airstrikes on the northern Syrian city of Raqqa and its outskirts over the past three days have killed at least 33 Daesh fighters. The Britain-based observatory says the fighters were mostly killed when their checkpoints were attacked by French and other warplanes. Meanwhile, Seoul's spy service told lawmakers on Wednesday that about 200 Syrians fleeing war have arrived by airplane in South Korea, but the government has yet to decide whether to grant refugee status to any of them. It wasn't clear over what time period the Syrians had arrived, but National Intelligence Service chief Lee Byoung Ho told lawmakers that they are mostly wealthier individuals who could afford to fly, according to the office of lawmaker Shin Kyung-min. While most of the Syrians have been permitted to leave the airport and stay elsewhere while they wait for South Korea to decide whether to grant them refugee status, 65 of them are still at the airport where they are being questioned by officials, Shin's office said. Lee said there are no particular sign suggesting the country has become vulnerable to terrorist attacks by Daesh or its supporters in the wake of the attacks in Paris, it said. — Agencies
