More flee as Turkey sends troops, tanks

Turkey yesterday sent more troops and tanks to bolster its military presence in northwestern Syria, where President Bashar Assad’s forces have been advancing in a devastating, Russian-backed offensive that has sparked a massive wave of people fleeing in wet and blustery winter weather.

Syria’s Idlib region near the border with Turkey is the last rebel-held bastion in the warravaged country. The push by Assad’s forces into towns and villages in the province over the past month has uprooted more than half a million people, who have fled the advancing troops.

The campaign has angered Turkey, which backs the rebels, and brought the two countries’ troops into a rare, direct confrontation, At least eight Turkish troops and civilians and 13 Syrian soldiers have been killed.

The Syrian offensive appears aimed for now at securing a strategic highway in rebel-controlled territory, as opposed to an all-out campaign to retake the entire province, including the city of Idlib, the densely populated provincial capital.

Earlier this week, Syrian government troops took control of the former rebel town of Saraqeb, which is strategic because it sits on the intersection of two major highways. One of them leads to the capital, Damascus, to the north, and another connects to the country’s western and eastern regions.

Turkey, which backs the Syrian opposition and has been monitoring a ceasefire in the rebel enclave, has protested the government assault, calling it a violation of the truce it negotiated with Russia.

In recent weeks, Ankara has sent in troops and equipment to reinforce monitoring points it set up to observe a previous ceasefire, which has since crumbled, and has also deployed forces around towns that are threatened by the Syrian advance.

Idlib and nearby rural Aleppo are the last rebel-held areas in Syria. They are home to more than 3 million people, most of them already displaced by violence.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been on the move in recent weeks, fleeing toward areas closer to the Turkish border. Of the 580,000 people who have been displaced since December 1, Unicef estimates that about 300,000 are children.

Also yesterday, Russia’s Defence Ministry accused Israel of nearly shooting down a Syrian passenger jet with 172 people aboard during a missile strike on the suburbs of Damascus a day earlier. A spokesman for the Israeli prime minister did not respond to a request for comment.