Turkish fighting in Syria escalates
Turkey hit targets in northern Syria, responding to shelling by Syrian government forces that killed at least eight Turkish soldiers and civilian contractors, Turkey’s president said yesterday.
A Syrian war monitor said 13 Syrian troops were also killed.
Syrian activists said airstrikes in the country’s northern, rebelheld region also killed at least nine civilians yesterday.
The exchange of fire inside Syria between Ankara and Damascus came hours after a large Turkish military convoy entered the northwestern province of Idlib, the last rebel stronghold in Syria. The fighting is likely to further increase tensions between the two neighbouring countries, as such direct clashes have been rare. It could also cause friction between Russia and Turkey, which have sought to co-ordinate their actions in Syria.
Earlier, Turkey’s National Defence Ministry said the Turkish forces were sent to Idlib as reinforcements and were attacked there despite having previously given their co-ordinates to local authorities. It said Turkish forces responded to the attack, destroying targets.
Turkey’s President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan said five servicemen and three civilian contractors were killed by Syrian government forces. Speaking at a news conference on a visit to Ukraine, he accused Syria’s ally Russia of ‘‘turning a blind eye’’ to the government offensive in Idlib. He added that Turkey has shown patience, but the ‘‘developments in Idlib have become increasingly intolerable.’’
Erdogan claimed the Syrian advance has pushed over 1 million people to flee toward the border with Turkey. The country already hosts 3.5 million Syrian refugees.
The UN provided a lower estimate yesterday, saying that half a million people have been displaced since December 1 due to the hostilities, around 80 per cent of them women and children. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ message to both Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin was to ‘‘deescalate’’ the situation in Idlib, said U.N. spokesman
Stephane Dujarric.
Idlib province is home to some 3 million people, many of them displaced from other parts of Syria in earlier bouts of violence.
The latest Syrian government offensive has been advancing since December into the country’s last rebel stronghold, which spans Idlib province and parts of the nearby Aleppo region. Turkish troops are deployed in some of those rebelheld areas to monitor an earlier cease-fire that was agreed to, but has since collapsed.
Erdogan earlier said Turkish warplanes were involved in yesterday’s clashes and claimed that there were between 30 and 35 casualties on the Syrian side, but offered no evidence. He said Russia was told that Ankara would not stand for any ‘‘situation where we are prevented’’ from responding to Syrian assaults.
‘‘It is not possible for us to remain silent when our soldiers are being martyred,’’ Erdogan said.
The deaths were one of the highest single-day tolls for Turkish troops in Syria. Ankara has lost scores of military personnel in the Syrian war.
Erdogan’s communications director Fahrettin Altun called on Russia to rein in Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.
The exchange occurred near the Syrian flashpoint town of Saraqeb, according to the the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitoring group.
It added that Turkish troops shelled Syrian army positions in three provinces, killing eight soldiers in Idlib, three in Latakia province and two in the Hama region.
However, Syria’s state news agency SANA said government forces captured two new villages on the way to Saraqeb. –AP