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Jumat, 28 Februari 2020

Russia deploys warships to Syria coast after Turkey loses 33 soldiers in attack - NBC News

LONDON — Russia on Friday announced it had dispatched two state-of-the-art warships to the Middle East after an attack in Syria killed 33 Turkish soldiers.

Videos posted on social media showed two of Russia’s newest guided missile frigates, the Admiral Grigorovich and Admiral Makarov, making their way through the Bosporus, a Turkish-controlled chokepoint that runs through Istanbul, on their way to the Syrian coast.

Though Russia and Turkey have seen a rapprochement in recent years, much to the chagrin of the U.S. and its NATO allies, the two sides pursue opposing goals in Syria: Moscow backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Ankara backs rebel groups opposing him in northern Syria.

Jan. 11, 202000:59

Turkey has beefed up its support — both in men and materiel — for rebel forces in the face of a Syrian regime assault on the last remaining opposition stronghold in Idlib province. The escalation of violence has again highlighted Russia and Turkey’s irreconcilable aims in Syria.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Friday that the Turkish forces in Idlib came under Syrian government fire while operating alongside “terrorist formations” near the settlement of Behun, referring to Turkish-backed rebels.

“[Russian forces] have constantly requested and confirmed with their Turkish colleagues the coordinates of the location of all units of the Turkish armed forces positioned near the areas of terrorist actions,” the Russian statement said.

The statement said that Turkey failed to notify Russia that its troops were operating in the region while simultaneously denying that any Russian aircraft were conducting air strikes in the region.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking at press conference Friday, expressed his condolences for the Turkish soldiers, but noted that the incident would have been prevented if Ankara honored a de-confliction agreement between the two militaries in the region. He also said Presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Erdogan have spoken about the situation.

The deployment Friday of Russian ships, capable of firing guided cruise missiles at land targets, comes as Turkey mulls over possible responses to the killing of its soldiers by Russian-backed Syrian forces on Thursday— including the possibility of a wider Turkish assault on Syrian forces in Idlib.

Turkey-backed Syrian fighters rest in the town of Saraqib in Syria's Idlib province on Thursday.Bakr Alkasem / AFP - Getty Images

Military tensions last flared in 2017, when Turkey shot down a Russian aircraft that strayed into Turkish airspace while conducting bombing runs on Ankara-backed rebel forces in north-western Syria, raising the specter of broader conflict between Europe’s two largest militaries.

Turkey ultimately backed down from that standoff and signed on to purchase Russian S-400 air defense systems. Since then, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Erdogan have made a show of fostering closer ties – at the expense of Turkey’s relations with NATO.

But now, with tensions again flaring with Russia, Erdogan is looking West for support. At Turkey’s request, NATO will be holding a meeting to consult with Ankara on the situation in Syria on Friday.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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2020-02-28 11:28:00Z
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Turkey Vows to Resist Attacks Against Its Forces in Syria - The New York Times

ISTANBUL — Turkey vowed on Friday to resist further aggression against its troops in northwestern Syria, a day after Russian or Syrian air and artillery strikes killed 33 Turkish soldiers, bringing Russia and Turkey close to open conflict.

NATO ambassadors met on Friday in an emergency session called by Turkey, a member state. European officials called for calm, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin spoke to each other in an effort to calm tensions. According to the Russian side, they agreed to hold a summit meeting in the near future.

But emotions were still running high in Turkey on Friday. “We will not leave the blood of our brave soldiers on the ground,” Fahrettin Altun, the director of communications in the Turkish presidency, wrote in a thread of comments posted on Twitter. “The international community must act to protect civilians and impose a no-fly zone.”

Russia denied any role in the attacks, saying on Friday that none of its jets were operating in the area when they occurred. “Aircraft of the Russian Air Force did not engage in combat in the Behun vicinity,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Turkey has blamed the strikes on the Syrian government. But it has also indirectly blamed Russia, saying it knew of the presence of Turkish troops and did nothing to stop the attack even after being alerted. Russia has been conducting a ferocious campaign of aerial bombardment in the province of Idlib in support of the Syrian offensive to seize control of the last rebel-held region.

Turkey’s defense minister, Hulusi Akar, said the attack was carried out even though the Turkish troops had coordinated their location with Russian forces on the ground. He added that there were no other armed groups near the Turkish units at the time of the attack, as Russian officials have suggested.

“Following the first strike, although another warning was made, the attack continued; during those airstrikes even ambulances were hit,” he said in comments to the Anadolu news agency in the Turkish border city of Hatay.

Turkish planes, artillery and drones had retaliated after the attack, pounding the Syrian government positions responsible, he said. “Our operations will continue until the bloody hands laid on our soldiers are broken,” he said.

Moscow also denied that Turkey had shared coordinates of its troops with Russian forces, saying they tried to stop the attacks as soon as they were told about them.

While there was no way to resolve the conflicting accounts, Russia is known to practice hybrid warfare, of which lies and deception are an integral part. In Crimea, for instance, it took nearly a year before Mr. Putin admitted that the “green men” who invaded the territory were in fact Russian soldiers without insignia.

Reports from the scene described a Russian jet striking a Turkish convoy and then artillery strikes pounding Turkish troops in several buildings. The prolonged strikes prevented rescuers from reaching the wounded, Ahmed Rehal, a Syrian journalist, reported.

Turkey was not able to evacuate the casualties by air, because Russia controls the airspace in northwestern Syria. As a result, rescue workers and civilians were forced to transport the dead and wounded to the Turkish border in trucks.

Mr. Altun called on Russia and Iran to abide by the agreement reached in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, two years ago for de-escalation in the region, and he repeated an appeal from Turkish officials for NATO to honor its responsibilities toward a fellow member.

“We have been targeting all regime positions from the ground and the air,” he posted on Twitter. “We call on the parties of the Astana Process and the broader international community to honor their responsibilities. A repeat of past genocides such as those in Rwanda and Bosnia cannot be allowed in Idlib.”

Turkish officials have warned that if the pressure in Idlib is not resolved, Turkey will not be able to stem a tide of Syrian refugees forging across borders into Europe. Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, said that the alliance would meet under Article 4 of its treaty, which allows any member to request talks when it believes its “territorial integrity, political independence or security” is threatened.

The talks do not commit the 29-nation alliance to any particular action or response. The article is different from Article 5, which is about mutual self-defense and refers to an attack on the territory of any member. The attack in question did not take place on Turkish soil.

The Russian Defense Ministry rejected Turkey’s assertion that it had alerted Russian forces before the strikes. “Immediately after obtaining information about injured Turkish servicemen, the Russian side took comprehensive measures to completely stop shelling by the Syrian military,” the statement said.

Sergei V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said at a news briefing following talks with Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn of Luxembourg on Friday that Russia’s presence in Syria was justified. “We insist that there should be no compromises with terrorists, who have been rearing their head after the so-called Arab Spring broke out in 2011,” he said.

The European Union’s top diplomat warned that the situation in Idlib could slide into an international confrontation.

“Ongoing escalation around needs to stop urgently,” said the E.U. high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, on Twitter. “There is a risk of sliding into a major open international military confrontation.”

He added that the bloc would “consider all necessary measures to protect its security interests. We are in touch with all relevant actors.”

Russia said earlier on Friday it was sending two warships armed with cruise missiles to waters off the Syrian coast.

Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Brussels, and Oleg Matsnev from Moscow.

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2020-02-28 11:27:00Z
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Russia denies responsibility for attack in northern Syria that killed 33 Turkish soldiers - The Washington Post

Aref Tammawi AFP/Getty Images Turkish troops patrol in the town of Atareb in the rebel-held western countryside of Syria's Aleppo province on Feb. 19.

MOSCOW — Russian military officials denied responsibility for an airstrike in northern Syria that killed dozens of Turkish troops, as the risk of a major military confrontation between Russia and Turkey in the region escalated sharply.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense issued a statement Friday stating that no Russian jets had been operating in the area of the strike in Idlib province Thursday.

“Aircraft of the Russian Air Force did not engage in combat in the Behun vicinity,” the ministry said.

Gov. Rahmi Dogan of Hatay province in Turkey, announced that 33 soldiers were killed. Dozens more were wounded.

The Russian statement said it had warned Syria to cease the attacks on anti-regime fighters in the Behun region when it became aware of the Turkish casualties.

“As soon as the information about Turkish casualties was received, the Russian side took comprehensive measures to fully stop the firing by the Syrian forces and to ensure safe evacuation of the dead and injured Turkish servicemen to the Turkish territory,” the ministry said.

The Defense Ministry statement added that Turkey’s military had not provided Russia with the geolocation of its forces in Behun.

“At the same time, according to the coordinates provided by the Turkish side to the Russian Center for Reconciliation, there were no — and should not have been any — units of the Turkish armed forces in the area of Behun,” the Russian Defense Ministry statement said.

[Syrian airstrike kills Turkish soldiers in Idlib, Turkish official says]

Turkey convened an emergency meeting of NATO ambassadors on Friday morning, stopping short of an attempt to invoke the alliance’s all-for-one, one-for-all mutual defense pact but still drawing the group into the increasingly tense situation.

Under NATO’s founding treaty, any member can request consultations if it believes its security is under threat. It is only the sixth time in NATO’s 71-year history that a member has done so.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg spoke Thursday night to Turkish Foreign Minister Mehmet Cavusoglu. NATO said in a statement that “Stoltenberg condemned the continued indiscriminate air strikes by the Syrian regime and its backer Russia in Idlib province.”

Turkey has deployed thousands of troops in Syria to prevent the forces of President Bashar al-Assad from defeating anti-regime militias in Idlib. In recent days, Russian officials have repeatedly accused Turkey of breaching a 2018 cease-fire deal and accused it of using artillery strikes and attack drones to defend anti-regime militias, whom it designates as terrorists. Idlib province is largely controlled by an extremist group that once had ties with al-Qaeda.

Tensions in the region have escalated sharply as Russian-backed Syrian forces have advanced into Idlib, the last opposition stronghold, infuriating Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey who fears that refugees fleeing the Syrian advance could spill across the border.

Erdogan has threatened to escalate military attacks on Syria if its forces do not retreat. Talks between Moscow and Ankara to resolve the crisis have failed to produce a solution.

The Syrian advance has caused a humanitarian crisis as hundreds of thousands of displaced Syrians have fled their homes heading toward Turkey, many of them lacking adequate shelter.

Turkey, a NATO member, and Russia back opposing sides in Syria’s civil war, with Russia supporting Assad’s regime and Turkey supporting anti-regime forces. The conflict has put increasing strain on the close relationship between Putin and Erdogan.

Russia, which has two crucial military bases in Syria, has carried out airstrikes to aid the Syrian advance and provided Assad’s forces with other military support.

A senior Turkish official announced Friday that Turkey would open its borders to allow Syrian refugees to freely spill into Europe, Reuters reported Friday, without naming the official.

“All refugees, including Syrians, are now welcome to cross into the European Union,” the official said.

Russian State Duma Defense Committee deputy chairman Yury Shvytkin accused Turkey of aggression against Syria and flagrant support for terrorists.

“We will continue our effort to fight militants and terrorists together with al-Assad,” Shvytkin told Interfax news, adding that it would be “inadmissible” for NATO to intervene.

Michael Birnbaum in Stockholm contributed to this report.

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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2020-02-28 10:48:00Z
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33 Turkish soldiers killed by airstrike in northwestern Syria - CBS News

Ankara, Turkey — Turkey on Friday raised the death toll from a Syrian government airstrike on its forces in northwestern Syria the previous night to 33 Turkish troops, the highest number of Turkish soldiers killed in a single day since Ankara first intervened in the Syrian conflict in 2016.

The deaths, which came in an attack late Thursday, were a serious escalation in the direct conflict between Turkish and Russia-backed Syrian forces that has been waged since early February. The earlier reported death toll was 29 troops.

Ambassadors from NATO countries were holding emergency talks on Friday at the request of Turkey, a member of the alliance.

Rhami Dogan, the governor of Turkey's Hatay province bordering Syria's Idlib region, said 32 wounded troops were being treated in hospitals. Turkey has had 54 soldiers killed in Syria's northwestern Idlib province since the beginning of February, including the latest fatalities.

Turkey is a main backer of the Syrian opposition while Russia has been giving military support to the weeks-long Syrian government offensive in Idlib that has displaced about 950,000 people and left hundreds of civilians dead.

Russia's Defense Ministry said Friday that the Turkish troops who came under fire in Idlib were deployed among "terrorist battle formations." The Turkish troops were in the area of Behun and, according to coordinates given to Russia's Reconciliation Center in Syria, "There were no Turkish military units in the area ... and there weren't supposed to be."

Russian air forces didn't carry out airstrikes in the area, the statement read, and after receiving information about Turkish casualties, "The Russian side took all the necessary measures in order for the Syrian forces to stop the fire," it said.

Meanwhile, two Russian frigates carrying cruise missiles have been deployed to Syria, Russian navy officials said Friday. Admiral Makarov and Admiral Grigorovich of the Black Sea Fleet are currently en route to the Syrian coast with Kalibr cruise missiles on board. Both warships previously took part in Russia's offensive in Syria.

Syrian state news agency SANA carried a brief report saying Turkey has acknowledged its forces were killed "in operations of the Syrian Arab Army against a terrorist organization," adding that Syrian troops at the time were repelling attacks by "terrorist groups backed by Turkey."

The U.N. secretary-general reiterated his call for an immediate cease-fire and expressed serious concern about the risk to civilians from escalating military actions," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

"Without urgent action, the risk of even greater escalation grows by the hour," he said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a six-hour emergency security meeting in Ankara late on Thursday, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin, who plays a senior role in foreign affairs, spoke to U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien.

The situation in Idlib "threatens our national survival" said Devlet Bahceli, who heads the nationalist party allied to Erdogan's government.

The airstrike came after a Russian delegation spent two days in Ankara for talks with Turkish officials on the situation in Idlib, where a Syrian government offensive has sent hundreds of thousands of civilians fleeing toward the Turkish border.

The offensive has also engulfed many of the 12 military observation posts Turkey has in Idlib.

Turkey hosts some 3.6 million Syrians and, under a 2016 deal with the European Union, agreed to step up efforts to halt the flow of refugees to Europe. Since then, Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to "open the gates" in several disputes with European states.

Omer Celik, spokesman for Erdogan's ruling party, said Turkey was "no longer able to hold refugees" following the Syrian attack, reiterating a standing threat by Ankara.

The DHA news agency reported that some 300 Syrian, Iranian, Iraqi, Moroccan and Pakistani refugees were gathering at the border with Greece, while others gathered on beaches facing Greek islands off Turkey's western coast.

On Friday morning, broadcaster NTV showed images of dozens of people carrying rucksacks, suitcases and plastic bags, crossing fields toward the Greek frontier.

Near the Pazarkule border crossing with Greece, Turkish police stopped some 150 refugees about a half mile from the border, preventing them from going further.

After the airstrike, angry crowds gathered outside the Russian consulate in Istanbul, Anadolu said. Standing in front of a line of riot police and a water cannon, they chanted, "Murderer Russia, murderer (Russian President Vladimir) Putin."

The airstrike came after Turkey-backed Syrian opposition fighters retook a strategic northwestern town from government forces on Thursday, opposition activists said, cutting a key highway just days after the government reopened it for the first time since 2012.

Despite losing the town of Saraqeb, Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces made major gains to the south. Assad now controls almost the entire southern part of Idlib province after capturing more than 20 villages Thursday, state media and opposition activists said. It's part of a weeks-long campaign backed by Russian air power into Syria's last rebel stronghold.

Defense Minister Hulusi Akar and the commanders of Turkey's army and air force went to the Syrian border Friday.

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2020-02-28 08:12:00Z
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Coronavirus: Worst-hit countries boost containment efforts - BBC News - BBC News

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Coronavirus: Worst-hit countries boost containment efforts - BBC News BBC NewsView Full Coverage on Google News
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2020-02-28 09:29:47Z
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At least 33 Turkish soldiers killed in an air attack by Syrian regime, Turkish governor says - CNN

Thirty-five soldiers injured in the attack have been evacuated to hospitals in Turkey, Dogan said.

A security meeting is being held at the presidential palace after the "nefarious attack against heroic soldiers in Idlib who were there to ensure our national security," according to a statement from Turkish director of communications Fahrettin Altun.

Turkey has retaliated in an effort to "revenge our martyred heroic soldiers," the statement said.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu spoke to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg following the Syrian attack, according to a statement released by the ministry. There were no further details about the content of the call.

The Syrian government has not commented on the Turkish claim. The Russian Defense Ministry denied that its air force carried out strikes in the area of Idlib where the Turkish soldiers were located. Moscow said Turkish forces were "located near the areas where terrorist groups were situated" and then "came under fire from Syrian forces."

Turkish soldiers are in the last rebel-held area of Syria as part of a 2018 de-escalation agreement between Ankara and Moscow. The Syrian government, backed by Russia, has mounted an aggressive air campaign against rebels in Idlib in recent weeks.

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the last opposition-held territory in Syria in the last two months, per Unite Nations figures, in the wake of an air campaign and swift ground offensive by the Syrian regime and its Russian backers.

Tens of thousands are still on the move, and nearly 700,000 of the displaced are women and children, the UN said.

A spokesperson for the State Department said the United States is "very concerned."

"We are in contact with Turkish authorities to confirm these developments and to have more clarity on the current situation on the ground," the spokesperson said.

"We stand by our NATO Ally Turkey and continue to call for an immediate end to this despicable offensive by the Assad regime, Russia and Iranian-backed forces."

CNN's Dakin Andone, Mary Ilyushina and Jennifer Hansler contributed to this report.

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2020-02-28 07:27:00Z
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Kamis, 27 Februari 2020

Trump taps Pence to head up coronavirus outbreak response - CBS News

Washington — President Trump announced Wednesday night that he's placing Vice President Mike Pence in charge of efforts to tackle the coronavirus, as the administration seeks to reassure the public and the markets amid the global coronavirus outbreak. The president, speaking for only the second time from the White House press briefing room, tried to instill confidence that his administration is on top of the health epidemic.

Speaking to reporters while flanked by Pence, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and other officials on his coronavirus task force, the president said the risk to Americans from the virus is "very low," even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warns Americans to prepare for disruptions of their normal lives and the spread of the virus is a matter of if, not when. Mr. Trump appeared to disagree with that assessment.

"I don't think it's inevitable. It probably will. It possibly will. It could be at a very small level or it could be at a larger level. Whatever happens, we're totally prepared," the president told reporters.

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