Turkish troops killed in Syrian airstrike

BEIRUT—Nearly two dozen Turkish soldiers were killed in an airstrike by Syrian government forces in northeast Syria, a Turkish official said Friday.

The deaths mark a serious escalation in the direct conflict between Turkish and Russiabacked Syrian forces that has been waged since early February.

Rahmi Dogan, the governor of Turkey’s Hatay province bordering Syria’s Idlib region, said 22 troops were killed and others were seriously wounded in the attack late Thursday.

In addition to three Turkish soldiers killed in Idlib earlier Thursday, the casualties mark the largest death toll for Turkey in a single day since Ankara first intervened in Syria in 2016. At least 43 have now been killed in Idlib since the start of February.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was holding an emergency security meeting in Ankara, state-run Anadolu news agency reported. Meanwhile Turkish Foreign Minister Mevult Cavusoglu spoke to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg by telephone.

The airstrike came after a Russian delegation spent two days in Ankara for talks with Turkish officials on the situation in Idlib, where a Syrian government offensive has sent hundreds of thousands of civilians fleeing towards the Turkish border.

The airstrike came after Turkey-backed Syrian opposition fighters retook a strategic northwestern town from government forces on Thursday, opposition activists said, cutting a key highway just days after the government reopened it for the first time since 2012.