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Clashes among Syrian rebel groups backed by Turkey ended on Sunday after they agreed to a truce, residents and rebel sources said, easing fears of wider internecine warfare among opponents of President Bashar al Assad’s rule.
Rebel negotiators told Reuters that Turkey, which maintains thousands of troops inside northwest Syria, mediated a deal among Failaq al Sham, Levant Front, Jaish al Islam and Ahrar al Sham.
“A short while ago, in response to the rocket attack, (Israeli military) aircraft struck a number of Hamas terror targets in the Gaza Strip,” the army said in a statement.
The strikes came after Hamas “launched a rocket… toward Israeli civilians in southern Israel”, it said, adding the projectile was intercepted by Israel’s air defences.
The Turkish army has completed its preparations for a military operation against the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units (YPG) in northern Syria, according to the Turkish daily Sabah.
The outlet added that the military are awaiting orders from the Turkish government to begin the operation.
Five Turkish soldiers were killed Tuesday in clashes with Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, Turkey’s defense ministry said. Two other soldiers were wounded in the fighting.
The clashes took place during Turkey’s latest cross-border offensive against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which maintains bases in northern Iraq. Turkey launched its latest offensive, named Operation Claw Lock last month in northern Iraq’s Metina, Zap and Avashin-Basyan regions.
A rocket attack targeting a military bus in Syria killed 10 soldiers and wounded nine more in the northwest on Friday, state news agency SANA reported, in a deadly flare-up near the frontier with rebel-held territory close to the Turkish border.
The bus was hit in the Anjara area west of Aleppo at 9:30 a.m. (0630 GMT), SANA said. Militants had targeted the vehicle with an anti-tank rocket, it added, giving no further details.