A fragile ceasefire was holding along Turkey's border with Syria on Saturday, two days after President Tayyip Erdogan agreed the truce to allow Kurdish forces time to pull back from Ankara's cross-border assault.
Erdogan agreed the truce during talks in Ankara on Thursday with U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence on stemming a humanitarian crisis, which has put 200,000 civilians to flight in northeast Syria, and easing a security scare over thousands of Islamic State captives guarded by the Kurdish YPG militia targeted in Turkey's assault.
Turkey's defence ministry said on Saturday there hadbeen 14 "provocative attacks" from Syria in the past 36 hours butsaid it was continuing to coordinate closely with the United States to allowthe agreement to be implemented.
bombardment heard near the Syrian border town of Rasal Ain on Friday morning had subsided. They saw just a few Turkish militaryvehicles crossing the frontier on Saturday morning.
The truce sets out a five-day pause to let theKurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia pull out of a "safezone" Turkey has vowed to create in territory extending more than 30 km(about 20 miles) deep into Syria.
Ankara regards the YPG, the SDF's main Kurdishcomponent, a terrorist group because of its links to Kurdish insurgentsoperating in southeast Turkey.
Turkey's defence ministry said Defence MinisterHulusi Akar had urged his U.S. counterpart Mark Esper in a telephone call lateon Friday to ensure that YPG forces withdrew from the zone within the 120-hourperiod agreed under the truce.
