Ankara: Syrian government forces killed five Turkish soldiers in northwestern Syria yesterday, Turkey’s defence ministry said, after Ankara deployed thousands of troops there to stem a Syrian government offensive.
The attack, on a newly-established Turkish military base in Taftanaz in Idlib province, happened a week after eight Turkish military personnel were killed by Syrian army bombardment.
The two incidents were among the most serious confrontations between Turkish and Syrian troops in the nearly nine-year-long conflict in Syria, and Turkey has said it will drive back Syrian forces if they do not pull back by the end of this month.
“Their attacks against our posts have made an operation necessary,” Omer Celik, spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party, said in Ankara.
The rapid advance by Syrian government forces in Idlib, the last major enclave of insurgents opposed to President Bashar Al Assad, has driven nearly 700,000 people from their homes towards the closed-off Turkish border.
Turkey, which already hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees, says it cannot absorb any more and is ready for military action to halt the Syrian government advances.
It has poured 5,000 troops and convoys of military vehicles across the border, carrying tanks, armoured personnel carriers and radar equipment to bolster its existing military positions.
The defence ministry said Turkish forces retaliated yesterday for the attack in Taftanaz, which also wounded five soldiers who were flown by helicopter back to Turkey.
“Targets identified in the region were immediately targeted intensively...and the necessary response was given. The targets were destroyed and the blood of our martyrs was not left on the ground,” the ministry said.
A Turkey-backed Syrian rebel commander said the insurgents had also launched a military operation near the town of Saraqeb, south of Taftanaz, with Turkish artillery support.
As the conflict escalated in Idlib, Turkish and Russian officials met in Ankara for talks. The two countries back opposing sides in Syria, where Moscow’s military intervention in 2015 helped swing the war decisively in Assad’s favour.
Celik said there were no concrete results from the meeting, the second in three days, and the talks would continue.
Russia and the Syrian government say they are fighting terrorists in Idlib, which is largely controlled by jihadist fighters.