Cavusoglu said some 50,000 people have returned from Turkey to areas that have been captured by Turkish troops and Turkey-backed opposition fighters, adding that security in these areas should eventually be handed to local forces. "People started returning to these places," Cavusoglu said during a visit to the coastal city of Izmir in western Turkey. Since then dozens of Turkish soldiers have been killed most of them in an around the northern town of al-Bab that was once and IS stronghold. Nearby in northern Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces tried under the cover of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition to besiege the IS stronghold of Tabqa. Meanwhile, in central Syria, hundreds of opposition fighters and their families left the city of Homs after being evacuated from the last rebel-held neighborhood of al-Waer.

Source: ABC News April 01, 2017 09:53 UTC