Turkish tanks roll in to rebel-held Syria as highway fight steps up

Several Turkish armoured vehicles and tanks entered rebel-controlled north-western Syria early yesterday in the latest reinforcements sent in by Ankara amid a Syrian government offensive that has brought the two countries’ troops into a rare direct confrontation.

The Syrian government, backed by its ally Russia, has kept up a military offensive in Idlib province aimed at securing a strategic highway that runs along rebel-controlled territory. President Bashar Assad’s forces have seized dozens of rebel-held towns and villages in the past two months, displacing hundreds of people in the process.

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

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

The deployment and the new defensive role brought Turkish troops into a direct and rare confrontation with Syria troops that killed at least eight Turkish military and civilian personnel and 13 Syrian soldiers on Monday.

A video shows a long line of armoured vehicles and trucks, carrying tanks, filing into rebel-controlled rural areas of Idlib province yesterday. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitorsthewar,saidthenew troops were deployed west of the town of Saraqeb. It was the fifth known deployment of new troops into Syria over the past week.

Syrian government troops took control of the former rebel town of Saraqeb this week. The town is strategic because it sits on the intersection of two major highways, one linking the capital Damascus to the north and another connecting the country’s west and east. The Turkish military posts erected around Saraqeb did not stop the military advance, which left some of those Turkish posts now behind Syrian lines.

For weeks Syrian troops, backed by the Russian air force, have been advancing in rebel territory as the ceasefire deal reached in 2018 unravelled. The offensive has displaced more than half a million people, many of them arriving in open air and temporary shelters, often near the borders with Turkey. Idlib and nearby rural Aleppo are the last rebel-held areas in Syria and are home to more than three million people – most of them already displaced by previous rounds of violence.

Turkish officials say three Turkish observations posts are inside Syrian governmentcontrolled areas in Idlib.