jones is on the story for us a busy day a busy night dorian and so what is happening at the border now this is no longer just an operation of airstrikes is it. yeah that's right in fact to turkish defense ministry statement announced the ground operation had started said turkish forces had started to cross into syria into these towns that have been held by the syrian kurdish militia this follows hours of bombardment by took a shit tillery and supported by a turkish fighter bombers that have been pounding all along the syrian border as far as 3040 kilometers deep into this territory a sustained bombardment and this is a bunch of the much the way it's typical techies tactics from 2 previous operations of heavy bombardment the pave the way for the operation which is going expected to be a far more attracted a mole difficult leg of the operation given the fact that some of this fight is expected to be in heavily densely populated towns and this will race a specter of a high and growing number of civilian casualties which we already appear to have a code already in dorian with the u.s. secu

is dorian jones on the story for us tonight it is dorian thank you well as we heard the united states said all of this in motion on sunday with president donald trump's shock announcement that u.s. troops are pulling out of northern syria and leaving the kurds to fend for themselves the move was slammed by both democrats and republicans the president kept pushing back until today the white house releasing this statement on the turkish offensive the united states does not endorse this attack and has made it clear to turkey that this operation is a bad idea turkey has committed to protecting civilians protecting religious minorities including christians and ensuring no humanitarian crisis takes place and we will hold them to this commitment. well the assurances of the trump white house don't mean much tonight to the kurds in northern syria the security umbrella provided by u.s. forces has been removed the kurds are now bracing for an assault by the turkish military i spoke tonight with keno gabriele spokesman for the syria democratic forces that's the military arm of the kurds and i ask

correspondent dorian jones is standing by in istanbul good evening to you dorian what kind of operation are we looking at here dorian we just saw in that tweet from rich a thai air to one the goal here is to neutralize terrorist threats but is he talking about the terrorists being the kurds or is he talking about the terrorists being the isis prisoners that are in the area. speak to touch officials they'll say it's both but let's be clear the primary objective of this operation is to drive back the syrian kurdish militia that has been on turkey's border for several years has said that this group is a terrorist organization linked to a kurdish insurgency site turkey and they say that they have been committed to removing this threat from it and it will point to the fact that it has getting support from the international community saying that they are respecting turkey's right to protect its borders now this operation is going to be a major operation this is been in the planning for months turkey plans to create a 30 kilometer deep. safe zone as president calls it and it's going to be seve

straight to turkey that day w correspondent dorian jones joins us from istanbul welcome dorian as a tell us more about the turkish military operation. well there has been this ongoing bombardment from the air within hours of the announcement of the operation jets have been relentlessly pounding towns across the syrian border here at least 4 possibly 5 towns have been struck took issue tillery 2 have been bombarding the area along with mortar fire there have been some reports that the syrian kurdish forces have retaliated using small fire and mortars attacking nearby turkish border towns and this is just the very beginning of what is seen the turkish forces are laying the ground for a major ground offensive possibly they can start at night in the early hours of the morning part of a very major operation that turkey has been planning for many months i what are you hearing from northern syria. well it's very difficult to get a real report from what's happening but we do understand that from statements released by the syrian kurdish forces if the scribed major panic in town centers with the