(18 Oct 2019) Turkish troops and Syrian opposition fighters backed by Turkey were seen driving towards Turkish border towns on Friday.
Fighting continued Friday morning in a northeast Syrian border town at the centre of the fight between Turkey and Kurdish forces, despite a US-brokered cease-fire that went into effect overnight.
Shelling and gunfire could be heard in and around Ras al-Ayn as smoke billowed from locations near the border with Turkey and the Turkish town of Ceylanpinar. The fighting died down by mid-morning while smoke continued to rise.
Elsewhere along the border calm seemed to prevail, with no fighting heard along the border from Ras al-Ayn to Tal Abyad, a Syrian border town about 100 kilometers (62 miles) to the west.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, reported intermittent clashes in Ras al-Ayn but relative calm elsewhere since Thursday night, when Turkey and the US agreed to a five-day cease-fire to halt the Turkish offensive against Kurdish-led forces in the region.
The agreement - reached after hours of negotiations in Turkey's capital of Ankara between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and US Vice President Mike Pence - requires the Kurdish fighters to vacate a swath of territory in Syria along the Turkish border. That arrangement would largely solidify the position Turkey has gained after days of fighting.
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