Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in a televised speech on Friday that some 15,000 Syrians fleeing Aleppo have reached Turkey’s borders, adding that tens of thousands more could also be on the way.
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Aid agencies warned that an estimated 20,000 people are waiting at the Bab al-Salam border crossing near the Turkish town of Kilis, many of them sleeping in the open. “As we have repeatedly said, Turkey will not act unilaterally”, Erdogan said.
The border gate at Oncupinar, near the southern city of Kilis, was closed, but that did not stop dozens of Syrians from queuing to beg Turkish authorities to allow in their relatives from the other side. “We have so many people coming into the area that we have completely abandoned any kind of co-ordination with military leaders and have to focus on humanitarian support – getting up tents and bringing in food”, said Munzer Sallal, the deputy governor of Aleppo.
Turkey says it is prepared to help the refugees but the frontier remains shut. She said the displaced are “Syrians in need for global protection”, and that this was the message delivered in the meeting.
The deputy spokesman for the United Nations secretary-general, Farhan Haq, told reporters Friday that another 5,000 to 10,000 people have been displaced to Azaz city and 10,000 have been displaced to Afrin. Earlier this week, a U.N.-led attempt to launch indirect talks between a government delegation and opposition representatives in Geneva was adjourned after several days of acrimonious bickering.
Increasingly intensive Russian airstrikes are pushing thousands of Syrians north, away from the northern outskirts of the once bustling city, according to the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, the main opposition group. Although the road north to Turkey has been cut, Aleppo residents still have an escape route – and rebels, a supply line – to the west, via the border crossing of Bab al-Hawa.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its fighter jets had hit 875 targets in Syria this week, including airstrikes in the northern offensive.
The surge in fighting contributed to the collapse of peace talks in Geneva this week and has focused growing criticism among Western allies on the role of Russian Federation in fueling a war it had said it was seeking to solve.
He called on rebel fighters to “come to their senses” and lay down their weapons.
He said conventional wisdom and logic would suggest the idea of Saudi troops in Syria is hard to imagine, but that “with the insane Saudi leadership nothing is far-fetched”.
“Any ground intervention in Syria, without the consent of the Syrian government, will be considered an aggression that should be resisted by every Syrian citizen”, he told a news conference in Damascus.
Iranian officials have said that Iranians have an “obligation” to protect Syrian Shiite shrines. One side, the “rebels”, is dramatically losing the battle and it seems like they are only negotiating as subterfuge, out of fear of being defeated.
Iran has said it has dispatched military advisers to Syria, but denies sending combat troops.
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The state-run SANA agency also reported the victory, saying government forces in Atman scattered the “terrorists” – a term that President Bashar Assad’s government uses to refer to all rebels.
