Fighting also resumed at dawn between rebels and government forces in the northwestern province of Latakia, where the Syrian army and its allies are trying to take back more territory from rebels at the border with Turkey. “We will take the necessary measures against the Syrian Kurds and Islamic State if we feel the need”, Davutoglu said.
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“Civilians are unable to access basic rights of life, from food to education to emergency medical care”, Ruhat Sena Aksener, Amnesty International’s director of campaigns in Turkey, said in an interview.
He adds however that the cease-fire brokered by the US and Russian Federation which went into effect at midnight has sharply reduced government attacks across northern Syria where his group is based.
Kalın said Turkey had no plans for a unilateral ground operation in Syria, emphasizing that Ankara would work in line with the global coalition.
Ankara considers the Syrian Kurdish group, known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, a terror organization because of its links to Turkey’s own outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, and has been shelling its positions inside Syria along the border with Turkey. Russian Federation and the United States are on opposing sides of the conflict, with Moscow backing Assad and Washington supporting the opposition, but the two powers have been making a concerted push for the ceasefire to be respected.
Russia’s foreign minister says he hopes Washington will keep its obligations under a Syria truce deal negotiated by Russian Federation and the U.S. “We can hit them anywhere, anytime – and we do”, said Obama, who was flanked by Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other top advisers. The truce will not cover the Islamic State group and the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front. In Damascus, a Nusayri state, in Northern Syria, Kurdish administration and in the middle, the region said to belong to Sunni Arabs but now under Daesh control.
YPG forces have exploited recent gains by forces loyal to Assad, backed by Russian airstrikes, and seized additional territory near Turkey’s border. He said dozens of Daesh fighters had been killed.
This week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that around 400,000 people had died and 12 million people been displaced since the war started.
The explosion rocked the town of Salamiya, east of Hama city in central Syria, just hours after the U.S. and Russia-backed truce came into effect. One benefit to the ceasefire excluding members of ISIS and al Nusra Front, is that it may draw them out and isolate them from the rest of the fighting.
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Turkey said Friday that a ground offensive in Syria is not “binding” and prepared, apparently backing out from a possible unilateral intervention into Syria that it might have considered several weeks ago.
