TURKISH President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened more attacks on US-backed Kurdish militia in Syria and Iraq yesterday.

Speaking in Istanbul, Mr Erdogan insisted that US support for such groups “must come to an end” and said he would bring the matter up at a meeting with President Donald Trump next month.

He was speaking the day after his government deployed troops to the region of southern Turkey that borders Syria.

On Friday, US troops embedded with the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia — without the consent of Damascus — began patrolling on the other side of the frontier in a clear warning to Ankara not to repeat last week’s air raids on US allies in Syria.

The Turkish air force also bombed a radio station and media centre of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) — which Turkey and its Nato allies have designated a terrorist organisation — in Sinjar, across the border in Iraq.

The YPG’s parent organisation, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), and Turkey’s pro-Kurdish HDP party both accused Turkey of aiding Isis extremists with the attacks.

In a development bound to anger Mr Erdogan, the YPG were on the verge of liberating the town of Tabqa, on the south bank of the Euphrates, from Isis yesterday.

The PYD-affiliated Hawar news agency said the guerillas had liberated six more districts of the town, which lies close to an 800-megawatt hydroelectric dam, after a week of steady progress against the death cult.

Tabqa is the last major town between the Kurdish forces and the Isis stronghold of Raqqa.

Meanwhile, the Syrian army launched a new offensive in the sparsely populated east of Homs province, seizing a string of villages and hilltops in a salient of Isis-occupied territory between Palmyra to the east and Aleppo to the north.

And in the East Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, fierce internecine battles between the Western-backed Army of Islam, the al-Rahman Legion of the Free Syrian Army and the al-Qaida-affiliated Hayat Tahrir as-Sham (Hetesh) continued for a third day.

An Army of Islam statement vowed yesterday to “eradicate” its fellow jihadis in Hetesh from the enclave.

The fighting broke out late last week when Hetesh blocked Army of Islam reinforcements from the main urban centre in Duma to the nearby insurgent outpost of Qaboun, where the army is gaining ground.

The al-Rahman Legion reportedly controls most of the weapons in the area after receiving smuggled TOW antitank missiles from the US.