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People Protection Units (YPG) spokesperson Redur Xelil said that, despite an announcement to the contrary on Wednesday, the YPG would not be retreating from the west of the Euphrates. 

"Turkey's Jarablus intervention is a hostile approach," he told Voice of America radio on Wednesday evening. "The main target of this operation is the Kurdish people and their gains rather than IS. We are in the west of Euphrates and take our place within Syrian Democratic Forces. We are in our own land and we will not leave it as per some request. We will not act in line with the request of Turkey or some other power.

"Turkish state cannot shape our position there in accordance with its own interests. Our forces will remain there and there will be no retreat. Nobody has the right to impose YPG's withdrawal from there and we will never accept such a thing."

On Wednesday, US Vice President Joe Biden said that the YPG would lose US support if they continued its march. The YPG appeared to say they would comply, but also said that the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the US-back coalition of which the YPG is part, would remain.

Official video from the Sulat Murat Tumeni militia, the main rebel force to launch a ground offensive against the Islamic State from Turkey this week, has been released, apparently showing its fighters entering Syria and the largely deserted town of Jarablus. 

A US-led coalition air strike on an Islamic State (IS) group weapons factory near the militants' Syria stronghold Raqa may have killed civilians, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

"Reports indicate that what appeared to be a non-military vehicle drove into the target area after the weapon was released from the aircraft," the US military's Central Command said in a statement.

"The vehicle's occupants may have perished as a result of the strike."

CENTCOM said it had referred the August 23 strike for an initial internal investigation. It did not provide additional details.

"Every report of civilian casualties, from either internal or external sources, is scrutinized regarding possible casualties and collateral damage," the statement said.

It is not uncommon for civilians to move into the blast radius of a bomb after it has been released by a drone or a plane pilot, because it can take as long as 45 seconds for the missile to hone in on a target.

Drone operators are sometimes able to change a missile's trajectory in the last seconds before impact, sending the weapon crashing into a field or deserted area.

In total, the US military has acknowledged killing 55 civilians since launching a coalition air war against the IS group in Syria and Iraq two years ago, though critics say that is a dramatic underestimate.

A UN investigation established that President Bashar al-Assad's forces carried out at least two chemical attacks in Syria and that the Islamic State (IS) group used mustard gas as a weapon, according to a report seen by AFP on Wednesday.

The panel was able to identify the perpetrators of three chemical attacks carried out in 2014 and 2015, but was unable to draw any conclusions in the other six cases that it has been investigating over the past year.

Photos, allegedly showing deserted streets of Jarabulus have apeared online. 

The Sultan Murad brigade, a Free Syrian Army group largely composed of Syrian Turkmen, has captured the village of Keklice 3km inside Syrian territory.

The group entered Syria on Wednesday morning alongside Turkish forces, after they began their operation to clear the border town of Jarablus of Islamic State militants.

Sources told Hurriyet the fighters were preparing for an offensive moving eastwards toward central Jarablus.

The Jarablus Military Council, a group linked to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) who also aim to liberate Jarablus from Islamic State control, accused Turkey of "deliberately" targeting Kurdish neighbourhoods in Jarablus with air strikes and mortar fire overnight on Wednesday.

“This morning jet fighters started their aerial attack," said Jarablus Military Council Deputy Commander Armanc Cerablus, according to the Firat News Agency, a news agency linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

"60 percent of the city has been turned to ruins. We are just 2 km away from the city and we can see with the naked eye: They are targeting Kurdish neighborhoods deliberately."

Murat Yesiltas, director of security studies at the Turkish pro-government SETA Foundation think tank, told MEE that the post-coup cleanup of the military will not diminish the operational capabilities of the armed forces in any way, as Turkish forces begin operations in northern Syria.

“The Turkish military is fully capable of conducting its operations against Daesh," he said, using an alternative name for Islamic State. "The post-coup scenario doesn’t impact the Turkish military in any way as far as the Syrian theatre is concerned."

He also stressed that this operation was being carried out in cooperation with US-led coalition forces and any shortfall in Turkey’s current aerial capability would be addressed that way.

The post-coup crackdown saw many pilots dismissed and even the defence minister had admitted to a shortfall of combat pilots.

Syria's foreign ministry has condemned the movement of Turkish forces into northern Syria as a "breach of sovereignty" according to state TV.

Turkey's military intervention in Syria is a "blatant aggression in Syrian internal affairs," and results from an agreement between it, Iran and Syria's government, Redur Xelil, the spokesman for the People's Protection Units (YPG) militia said on Wednesday.

Xelil added that Turkish demands for the YPG to pull back east of the Euphrates could only be answered by the Syrian Democratic Forces, the US-backed coalition against Islamic State of which the group is a major part.

The opposition Syrian National Coalition released a statement on Wednesday welcoming Turkey's military intervention in northern Syria, while emphasising that the operation was primarily led by the Free Syrian Army against Islamic State targets in Jarablus.

"The SNC confirms that it supports the FSA - which started from a number of factions in Aleppo - offensive on Jarablus to liberate it from the terrorist organisation Daesh (IS)," said the organisation in a statement, adding that it also supported the targeting of "allies of the regime in the area."

"The Coalition also welcomes the support provided by Turkey and the 'military operation alliance in Jarablus,' and we confirm that the military presence of the alliance is temporary and limited to specific logistical & supportive aims, and that the fighters of the FSA are the ones who are in charge of the field combat operations."

Free Syrian Army fighters allied to Turkey have taken four villages from Islamic State since the beginning of the Turkish military incursion to capture Jarablus from Islamic State began this morning.

According to the Dogan News Agency, 46 Islamic State fighters have also been "neutralised". The villages of Keklice, Kivircik, Elvaniye and Guguncuk were those taken.

The Turkish opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) has criticised the ruling Justice and Development party's (AKP) slowness in tackling the Islamic State group pointing out that while it intervenes against the group in northern Syria it has not done enough to tackle the group domestically.

"The AKP turned a blind eye to IS instead of fighting it head on," said CHP spokeswoman Selin Sayek Boke, during a break in a meeting of the party's central executive board on Wednesday.

"It closed its eyes as people from 70 of our provinces joined IS ranks. IS freely organises picnics in the centre of Istanbul, lets it publish its magazines in the country."

David Barchard, a Turkey-based commentator, has written for MEE that - despite condemnations of Turkish intervention in northern Syria - a Turkish presence in the north could herald a possible alliance between Ankara and Damascus, as both governments begin to perceive the pro-Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) as a major threat in the region.

"Could Turkey make the forces of Assad its proxies against the Kurds? Wednesday's operations at Jarablus may point against this - but the possibility cannot be ruled out," he wrote.

"It may seem unlikely after four years of bitter attempts to overthrow the Syrian leader. Yet last week Syrian government forces struck at Kurdish targets in the north-eastern Syrian town of Hasakah by land and air, encountering stiff Kurdish resistance. Some sort of behind the scenes dialogue is also apparently taking place. Turkish newspapers on Monday leaked news, admittedly unconfirmed, of a possible secret visit to Damascus by a senior member of Turkey’s intelligence services.

"The latest operations could bring about a sea-change in the Syrian civil war. But for the victims of IS’s bombings in Gaziantep, Istanbul, Ankara, and other towns, there will be little comfort. The sleeper cells which strike at innocent people from out of nowhere will still be lying in wait."

Read the full piece here.