Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Thursday that some 10,000 Syrians who fled the Aleppo area were waiting at the Turkish border, seeking refuge.
Advertisement
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday Russia must be held accountable for the people it has killed in Syria, arguing that Moscow and Damascus were together responsible for 400,000 deaths there, Dogan News Agency reported.
The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said it estimated “up to 20,000 people have gathered at the Bab al-Salama border crossing and another 5,000 to 10,000 people have been displaced to Azaz city” nearby.
The mass movement of people from the city to Syria’s northwest border has prompted Turkey to keep their main border crossing closed for a second consecutive day as the country struggles to cope with the volume of migrants entering the country.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said Russian military activities in Syria continues to bolster the Bashar al-Assad regime and not the Syrian peace process – which Russia agreed to participate in a year ago.
He said Russian airstrikes north of Aleppo have “hugely increased” in the past two weeks.
Several countries have accused the Syrian government of sabotaging peace talks that collapsed this week with its military offensive.
In other fighting Friday, the government also retook a town in southern Syria, close to the provincial capital of Daraa.
The United Nations said around 15,000 people had been displaced by the assault, adding that 13 medical facilities had been hit by airstrikes.
Syrian state TV said on Friday that pro-government forces had seized Ratyan, just north of Aleppo city.
The city, Syria’s one-time commercial center, has been carved up between government and rebel-held districts since the summer of 2012.
The push by government forces has been backed by Russian bombings, including strikes that killed at least 21 civilians, including three children, yesterday, according to Britain-based monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. “We are continuing to stay focused on that operation”.
The Obama administration is preparing for possible air drops of humanitarian relief over besieged areas of Syria, where hundreds of thousands of people have been cut off for months from food and medicine and are at risk of starvation.
“This is connected with military operations in the Syrian city of Aleppo”.
Iran’s supreme leader says Iranian forces must fight Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq to prevent the militant organization spreading to Iran.
“The intense Russian Federation air strikes, mainly targeting opposition groups in Syria, is undermining the efforts to find a political solution to the conflict”, said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
Advertisement
French Ambassador Francois Delattre said the opposition couldn’t be expected to negotiate “with a gun to their heads”, and British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said Churkin “needs to look in the mirror and understand where the responsibility lies”.
