Luke 21:9-10: [Jesus said] "When you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away." Then he said to them, "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom."
In a statement by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday, Turkey and the United States are working on an operation to finish securing the northern Syrian border. The area that will be the focus is controlled by radical Islamists that have used it as a smuggling route.
“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 kilometers,” Kerry said in an interview with CNN.
According to Reuters, the area where the operations would take place is now controlled by the radical Islamists. The United States and Turkey hope that by sweeping Islamic State, also frequently called Daesh, from that border zone they can deprive it of route which has seen its ranks swell with foreign fighters and its coffers boosted by illicit trade.
Kerry mentioned the operation with Turkey as he described to CNN the mounting pressure on IS in both Syria and Iraq, but wouldn’t elaborate on what it amounted to and whether the U.S. would send ground troops to take part in the operation. U.S. President Barack Obama authorized the deployment of special forces against IS in an apparent deviation from an initial pledge not to have boots on the ground in the campaign.
Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioglu stated to the state-run Anadolu Agency, “We will not allow Daesh to continue its presence on our border.”
The fight against ISIS has increased in fervor with intense air strikes by both Russian and French warplanes 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.
