Source: The Guardian
Sources put attack death toll at between 22 and 70, in Ankara’s worst day of the conflict so far
Dozens of Turkish soldiers are reported to have been killed in an airstrike in Syria’s Idlib province, in a dramatic escalation in the battle for control of the country’s last opposition stronghold.
Military sources among moderate and jihadist rebel factions fighting in the northwestern province bordering Turkey said up to 70 Turkish soldiers died on Thursday night after a precision strike hit a two-storey building in the village of Balioun.
A Turkish convoy, part of reinforcements sent to the area to aid rebel groups earlier this month, was subjected to heavy shelling on Thursday morning. The soldiers had taken cover in Balioun, basing themselves in the local council building.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, put the initial death toll at 34. Rahmi Dogan, governor of Hatay province on the border with Idlib, confirmed at least 22 Turkish military personnel had died as ambulances streamed from a Syrian border crossing to a hospital in the nearby town of Reyhanli on Thursday night.
Turkish sources have blamed the Syrian regime for the attack, but several sources in Idlib and unverified footage off the nighttime strike suggested it had been carried out by the Russian air force, which has helped Damascus conduct a ferocious three-month-old offensive on Idlib.
Although Ankara and Moscow share important trade, energy and defence links, the relationship has already been sorely tested by the recent violence in Syria, where they back opposing sides.
Turkey responded with airstrikes on “all known” Syrian government targets, said the country’s communications director Fahrettin Altun early on Friday, according to state-run Anadolu news agency.
At the same time Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan chaired an emergency security meeting overnight, Turkish officials briefed reporters that Ankara had decided it would no longer stop Syrian refugees from reaching Europe by land and sea – a move calibrated to win EU and Nato support for its operation in Idlib.
Turkish police, coastguard and border security officials have already been ordered to stand down, Turkish officials added.
Almost one million people are camped out in desperate conditions on Idlib’s border with Turkey in winter weather as they flee the swift advance of Bashar al-Assad’s army and allied militias backed by Russian airpower.
Turkey has until now expressed extreme unwillingness to take in any more Syrians on top of the 3.6m refugees it already hosts. In an effort to stem the largest humanitarian crisis of Syria’s nine-year-old war to date and secure its border, Ankara took the unprecedented step of sending thousands of troops and convoys of equipment to Idlib in the past three weeks, where they have clashed directly with regime forces for the first time.
While Idlib province and the surrounding countryside are technically protected by a de-escalation deal brokered in 2018, the agreement broke down last year after control of most of the area was wrested from more moderate rebel groups by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate.
Despite warnings from the UN and aid agencies that fighting in Idlib would put 3 million civilians at risk, Damascus launched an attritional and then full-scale campaign on the province, arguing that HTS was not covered by the de-escalation deal.
Turkey has helped rebels to retake one town but had already lost 17 military personnel in the campaign before a strike on Thursday morning killed three, and the evening strike killed at least 22, marking the biggest single day of losses for the country’s forces.
Turkish attempts to broker a ceasefire, and growing international calls for a halt to the violence, have so far been met with indifference from the Kremlin. Erdoğan has vowed Ankara will not take the “smallest step back” in the standoff with Damascus and Moscow over Idlib, giving the regime until the end of the month to pull back.
US senator Lindsey Graham called on Thursday for the establishment of a no-fly zone over Idlib and called on Donald Trump to help stop the violence against civilians there.
“The world is sitting on its hands and watching the destruction of Idlib by Assad, Iran, and the Russians,” Graham, a Republican and an ally of Trump, said in a statement.
“I am confident if the world, led by the US, pushed back against Iran, Russia, and Assad that they would stand down, paving the way for political negotiations to end this war in Syria.”
Kay Bailey Hutchison, the US ambassador to Nato, said Thursday’s events should show Turkey “who is their reliable partner and who isn’t” and drop its purchase of a major Russian missile defence system, which Washington says threatens the western alliance.
