Turkey, Syria troops trade fire

• A Turkish military convoy of at least 240 vehicles entered northwest Syria
• Rocket attacks by Ankara on regime positions killed 13 Syrian govt troops

Turkish and Syrian troops traded deadly fire in Syria’s northwest yesterday, further raising tension between Ankara and regime backer Moscow over the war-torn Idlib rebel enclave.

An air strike also killed at least nine civilians in the same area, where the latest government offensive has caused one of the nine-year-old Syrian conflict’s worst waves of displacement.  The tit-for-tat shelling between Damascus and Ankara was the deadliest since Turkey deployed troops in Syria in 2016 and escalated tensions between the conflict’s two top foreign brokers.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had offered rare criticism of Russia last week, accusing it of “not honouring” agreements to prevent a regime offensive on the northwestern region of Idlib.

 The overnight clash began with regime shelling on Turkish positions in Idlib, hours after a Turkish military convoy of at least 240 vehicles entered northwest Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor.

 The attack killed four Turkish soldiers and wounded nine others despite previous coordination on where Ankara’s forces would be in the region, Turkey’s defence ministry said.  The Russian defence ministry said Ankara had failed to give prior warning of its troop movements at the time of the incident.

Retaliatory rocket attacks by Ankara on regime positions later killed at least 13 Syrian government troops and wounded 20 others in Idlib and the neighbouring provinces of Hama and Latakia, the Observatory said.

Most Syrian troops were killed south of Saraqeb, a flashpoint Idlib town that Damascus has been trying to encircle in recent days, said the Observatory.  State news agency SANA said the Syrian army had not suffered any casualties.

 Speaking to reporters at an Istanbul airport before leaving for Ukraine, Erdogan called it an “ongoing operation,” and said that 30 to 35 Syrian forces were “neutralised” in the counterattack that targeted 40 locations.  “When we have martyrs on our side, it is not possible for us to remain silent,” said Erdogan, warning Russia not to stand in the way of its response.

 A senior Turkish official said that the regime attack on Turkish troops and the government offensive in general were conducted “with Russian protection”.   

 “Russia should remove this protection from the regime elements which attack Turkish forces in this region,” ruling party spokesman Omer Celik told CNN Turk.  “Our target is not Russia,” he said. “The regime in this region after this attack is a target for us.”