The operations to liberate the Syrian town of al-Bab had made important progress and the next target would be Raqqa, the de facto capital of ISIS, the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a news conference in the capital Ankara.
"The al-Bab operation must be completed immediately in the period ahead. In recent days our special forces and the Free Syrian Army have made serious progress," Cavusoglu noted.
"We believe that the fight from now on will be more effective and that we will be able to clear both Syria and Iraq of ISIS. We told the previous administration not to rely on or trust a terror organization to fight an organization like ISIS. We said it would be a mistake but we were not able to get them to listen," Daily Mail cited Cavusoglu as saying.
A Syrian rebel official and a monitoring organization said the advancing rebel and Turkish forces had captured the western outskirts of al-Bab, some 30 km (20 miles) south of the Turkish border.
Al-Bab has been a major target of a Turkish offensive launched in northern Syria last August to drive Islamic State away from the border and prevent further gains by US-backed Kurdish militia that are also fighting the jihadist group.
