ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey’s prime minister’s office said the nation’s military and the US-backed coalition forces on Wednesday launched an operation to clear a Syrian border town from Islamic State militants.
The state-run Anadolu Agency said the operation began at 4 a.m. with Turkish artillery launching intense fire on Jarablus followed by Turkish warplanes bombing targets in the town.
It’s not clear if any Turkish or Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces have crossed the border.
The agency said the operation aims to clear Turkey’s border of ‘‘terror organizations’’ and increase border security. It said the aim also is to ‘‘prioritize and support’’ Syria’s territorial integrity.
The assault follows Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlet Cavusolgu pledge on Tuesday of ‘‘every kind’’ of support for operations against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, along a 60-mile stretch of Syrian frontier.
Yet the pledge to attack “terrorist organizations’’ could also put the NATO member on track for a confrontation with US-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria, who have been the most effective force against Islamic State and who are eyeing the same territory.
Turkey has been in a generational battle with its own Kurdish rebels and has accused those forces in Syria with backing attacks in southern Turkey.
Cavusolgu said Turkey would support twin operations stretching from the Syrian town of Afrin in the northwest, which is already controlled by Kurdish forces, to Jarablus, in the central north, which is held by the Islamic State group.
‘‘It is important that the terror organizations are cleansed from the region,’’ Cavusolgu said in a joint news conference with his Hungarian counterpart.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said some 500 Syrian rebels were massed on the Turkish side of the border in preparation for the assault, including local fighters from Jarablus. One rebel at the border told the BBC the number was as high as 1,500 fighters.
The latest developments have thrust the town into the spotlight of the ongoing Syrian civil war. Jarablus, which lies on the western bank of the Euphrates River where it crosses from Turkey into Syria, is one of the last important Islamic State-held towns standing between Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Syria.
Jarablus is 20 miles from the town of Manbij, which was liberated from the Islamic State by Kurdish forces earlier this month. Taking control of Jarablus and the militant-held town of al-Bab to the south would be a significant step toward linking up border areas under Kurdish control east and west of the Euphrates River.
Turkey has increased security measures on its border with Syria, deploying tanks and armored personnel carriers in recent days. On Tuesday, residents of the Turkish town of Karkamis, across the border from Jarablus, were told to evacuate after three mortars believed to be fired by militants landed there, Turkey’s Dogan news agency said.
Turkey has vowed to fight Islamic State militants at home and to ‘‘cleanse’’ the group from its borders after a weekend suicide bombing at a Kurdish wedding in southern Turkey killed at least 54 people, many of them children. Turkish officials have blamed the Islamic State for the attack.
Ankara is also concerned about the growing power of the US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces.
The Kurdish-led group known as the Syria Democratic Forces, or SDF, recaptured Manbij, triggering concerns in Ankara that Kurdish forces would seize the entire border strip with Turkey. The United States says it has embedded 300 special forces with the SDF.
