Tag Archives: Syria

Suspected Aleppo chlorine attack chokes dozens, rescue workers

Children play along a street in the rebel-held al-Sheikh Said neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A suspected chlorine gas attack on an opposition-held neighborhood in the Syrian city of Aleppo caused dozens of cases of suffocation on Tuesday, rescue workers and a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Civil Defence, a rescue workers’ organization that operates in rebel-held areas, said government helicopters had dropped barrel bombs containing chlorine on the Sukari neighborhood in eastern Aleppo.

The Syrian government has denied previous accusations it used chemical weapons during the five-year-old civil war. The Syrian army could not be immediately reached for comment on the latest allegations.

The Civil Defence said on its Facebook page that 80 people had suffocated. It reported no deaths. It posted a video showing wheezing children doused in water using oxygen masks to breathe.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks Syrian violence using sources on the ground, said medical sources had reported 70 cases of suffocation.

A United Nations and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons inquiry seen by Reuters last month found that Syrian government forces were responsible for two toxic gas attacks in 2014 and 2015 involving chlorine.

The Civil Defence accused the government of two other suspected chlorine gas attacks in August . The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria said it was investigating an August incident.

“Unimaginable crimes are occurring in Aleppo … pro-government aerial bombardments cause mass civilian casualties,” Commission Chairman Paulo Pinheiro told reporters in Geneva. “In government-held areas, indiscriminate ground shelling (by) armed groups … is also killing scores of civilians,” he added.

Aleppo has been one of the areas hardest hit by escalating violence in recent months after the collapse of a partial truce brokered by the United States and Russia in February.

Government forces put eastern Aleppo under siege on Sunday for a second time since July after advancing against rebels on the city’s outskirts. The city has long been divided between government and opposition areas of control.

The Syrian conflict has killed more than 250,000 people and forced more than 11 million from their homes.

(Reporting by John Davison; additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva.; Editing by Larry King)

With Syria ‘safe zone’ plan, Turkey faces diplomatic balancing act

A general view shows a damaged street with sandbags used as barriers in Aleppo's Saif al-Dawla district, Syria

By Orhan Coskun and Ercan Gurses

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey will have to strike a balance between the conflicting goals of Russia and the United States if it is to achieve its ambition of a “safe zone” in northern Syria and build on an incursion which gave it control of a thin strip of the border.

Turkey has for several years called for world powers to help create a zone to protect civilians in its war-torn southern neighbor, with the dual aim of clearing its border of Islamic State and Kurdish militia fighters and of stemming a wave of migration that has caused tensions with Europe.

Western allies have so far balked at the idea, saying it would require a significant ground force and planes to patrol a “no-fly zone”, a major commitment in such a crowded and messy battlefield. Russia, which backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has meanwhile argued in the past that any foreign incursion would be illegal.

But Turkey’s offensive into northern Syria, launched with its Syrian rebel allies two weeks ago, has created what officials in Ankara are already calling a “de facto safe zone”, driving Islamic State militants from the last 90-km (55-mile) strip of border territory they still controlled.

Turkey now wants international support for a deeper operation to take control of a rectangle of territory stretching about 40 km into Syria, a buffer between two Kurdish-held cantons to the east and west and against Islamic State to the south.

“The first phase of the plan has been achieved. Turkey no longer has borders with Islamic State. But this area is still very thin and vulnerable to attacks from the other side,” said a senior Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity so as to discuss the strategy more freely.

“What will be done now will depend on coordination with coalition powers and the support they will provide,” he said, adding an improvement in relations with Russia had “eased Turkey’s hand” operationally.

The Turkish-backed rebels, mainly Syrian Arabs and Turkmen fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, took charge of the frontier between the towns of Azaz and Jarablus on Sunday after seizing 20 villages from the ultra-hardline Islamists.

Ahmed Osman, commander of the Sultan Murad rebel group, one of the Turkish-backed forces, told Reuters he would like to see a permanent “safe zone” but that this would require an agreement between Turkey, the United States and Russia.

CONFLICTING INTERESTS

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, his hand strengthened by Turkey’s incursion, said on Monday he had raised the issue of a “safe zone” again with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama at the G20 summit in China.

Neither commented directly on the Turkish proposal, though both said they wanted to build cooperation in fighting terrorism in Syria. Erdogan’s spokesman said there were neither objections nor clear signs of support in the meetings.

A second senior Turkish official acknowledged both Washington and Russia “had their hesitations” but that a “de facto safe zone” had now become a reality on the ground and that their support, particularly in establishing a no-fly zone, was crucial.

Metin Gurcan, a former major in the Turkish military and an analyst for the Al Monitor online journal, said Washington and Moscow’s divergent agendas in Syria raised serious questions about the viability of the Turkish plans.

“We are talking about two superpowers with great stakes in Syria. They have contradicting strategic interests about the end goal in Syria,” he said.

More than five years of civil war have cut Syria into a patchwork of territories held by the government and an often competing array of armed factions, including Kurdish militia fighters, a loose coalition of rebels groups, and Islamic State.

The priority for Washington, which backs rebel factions fighting Assad in the civil war, is destroying Islamic State and it has been at odds with Turkey over the role of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia. The United States has backed the Kurdish fighters against the jihadists, but Turkey sees them as a hostile force linked to Kurdish militants on its own soil.

The two NATO allies have reached an uneasy agreement under which YPG fighters are meant to remain east of the Euphrates river, just outside Turkey’s proposed buffer zone, although Ankara has said it has yet to verify that they are doing so.

Turkey meanwhile appears to be navigating Russian concerns more smoothly since restoring relations with Moscow in August, nine months after ties were broken when it shot down a Russian fighter jet near the Syrian border.

Erdogan’s spokesman said on Tuesday that Russia had voiced full support for Turkey’s operation to clear the border of Islamic State. For its part, Turkey has been less insistent on Assad’s immediate exit.

“They appear to be lessening their demands for the ouster of Assad in deference to their new relationship with Russia,” said James Stavridis, former NATO supreme commander and dean at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

‘ARMAGEDDON’

Aside from the diplomatic challenges, a push deeper into Syria by the Turkish-backed Arab and Turkmen rebels poses significant military risks.

The Turkish-backed forces have been advancing toward Manbij, a city around 30 km south of Jarablus that was captured last month from Islamic State by a U.S.-backed coalition that includes the YPG. The Kurdish fighters are since supposed to have pulled back east of the Euphrates.

“We know there are de facto YPG factions still there. If they don’t retreat, Turkey will be determined and return Manbij to its owners,” said Yasin Aktay, a spokesman for Turkey’s ruling AK Party, referring to Arab and Turkmen communities who lived there before civil war broke out in 2011.

The Islamic State-held town of Al-Bab, west of Manbij, is another a key strategic target for both Turkish-backed and Kurdish forces where Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, one of Islamic State’s most prominent leaders, is thought to have been killed in a U.S. air strike last week.

To its northwest is the village of Dabiq – the site, according to Islamic prophecy, of a final battle between Muslims and infidels, an event in Islamic State propaganda that will herald the apocalypse.

“The fight for the Turkish-backed rebels is going to get tougher as they proceed south,” said a former Turkish soldier and security analyst Abdullah Agar. “According to Islamic State’s beliefs, they will face Armageddon here.”

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry in Beirut, Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara and Humeyra Pamuk, Edmund Blair and Akin Aytekin in Istanbul; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Pravin Char)

U.S. Russia work on Syria truce as Islamic State blasts kill dozens

Syrian army soldiers and civilians inspect the site of two explosions that hit the Arzouna bridge area at the entrance to Tartous

By Lisa Barrington and Roberta Rampton

BEIRUT/HANGZHOU, China (Reuters) – The United States and Russia will work in the next few days on a deal to curb fighting in Syria and build cooperation in the fight against terrorism, their leaders said on Monday, as blasts claimed by Islamic State killed dozens across the Arab nation.

The former Cold War enemies have been trying to broker a new truce after a ceasefire agreed in February unravelled in weeks, with Washington accusing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces – which are backed by Russia – of violating the pact.

U.S. President Barack Obama described talks with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin as tough but productive after their meeting at the G20 summit in China. Putin said the two men had understood each other and an agreement on ways to significantly reduce the violence in Syria could be reached in days.

“We have had some productive conversations about what a real cessation of hostilities would look like, that would allow us both, the United States and Russia, to focus our attention on common enemies, like ISIL and Nusra,” Obama said, referring to Islamic State and the hardline Nusra Front.

“We haven’t yet closed the gaps in a way where we think it would actually work,” he said, but added that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov would “keep working at it over the next several days”.

Putin told journalists there was a convergence of views between Russia and the United States. He said it was premature to give details about the terms of an agreement, but that the two nations would strengthen cooperation on fighting terrorism.

Truce talks were complicated on Sunday as government forces and their allies laid siege to the rebel-held eastern side of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war which Assad is determined to fully recapture. His gains have relied heavily on Russian air support since September last year.

Adding to the carnage, six blasts on Monday hit west of Damascus and the government-held cities of Homs and Tartous, as well as the Kurdish-controlled northeastern province of Hasaka, state media and a monitoring group said.

Islamic State fighters carried the out suicide attacks, its Amaq news agency said on Monday.

CONFLICTING AGENDAS

More than five years of civil war have cut Syria into a patchwork of territories held by the government and an often competing array of armed factions, including Kurdish militia fighters, a loose coalition of rebels groups, and Islamic State.

Obama and Putin discussed getting humanitarian aid into the country, reducing violence, and cooperating on combating militant groups, the U.S. administration official said.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he was working with the U.S.-led coalition and Russia to try to establish a ceasefire in Aleppo before the Eid al-Adha religious holiday expected to start around Sept. 11.

But in talks earlier on Monday, Kerry and Lavrov were unable to come to terms on a truce for the second time in two weeks, with U.S. officials stressing they would walk away if a pact could not be reached soon.

Russia says it cannot agree to a deal unless opposition fighters, backed by the United States and Middle East allies, are separated from al Qaeda-linked militants they overlap with in some areas. For Washington, the priority is stabilising Syria so as to destroy Islamic State.

NATO Turkey ally on Sunday said rebels it was backing had gained control of all areas on its border that had been held by the jihadists, depriving the ultra-hardline Islamist group of its main route to the outside world.

The announcement came some 10 days after Turkey launched its first major military incursion into Syria since the start of the war in 2011, an operation aimed as much at preventing further Kurdish territorial gains as at driving back Islamic State.

“Syrian citizens in our country and those would want to migrate from Syria can now live more peacefully in their own land,” Erdogan said, adding the Turkish incursion posed no threat to Syria’s territorial integrity.

He renewed calls for an internationally-policed “no-fly zone” to protect displaced civilians and help stem refugee flows. But the idea, which he also raised at a G20 summit in Turkey a year ago, has failed to gain traction with Western allies who fear it would mean a deeper military commitment.

DOZENS KILLED

Two of the explosions on Monday hit the Arzouna bridge area at the entrance to the Mediterranean city of Tartous, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and state news agency SANA said. The Observatory and a city hospital put the death toll at 35.

Syrian state television said the first explosion was a car bomb and the second a suicide belt detonated as rescue workers arrived. The blasts hit during a summer festival at Tartous, whose beaches recently featured in a government tourism video.

A car bomb meanwhile struck the city of Homs, around 80 km (50 miles) east of Tartous. The Observatory said the explosion hit an army checkpoint and four officers were killed.

West of Damascus, there was an explosion near the town of al Saboura, killing one person and injuring three, according to a police commander quoted by state media.

A motorbike also exploded in the centre of the northeastern city of Hasaka, which is controlled by the Kurdish YPG militia. The Observatory said the blast killed three members of a YPG-affiliated security force and that a percussion bomb also went off in the province’s Qamishli city.

The Kurdish YPG militia, a critical part of the U.S.-backed campaign against Islamic State, took almost complete control of Hasaka city in late August after a week of fighting with the government.

The YPG controls swathes of northern Syria where Kurdish groups have established de facto autonomy since the start of the Syrian war, much to the alarm of neighbouring Turkey, which fears the creation of a Kurdish enclave in northern Syria would fuel Kurdish separatist ambitions at home.

Ankara has demanded that Kurdish militia fighters remain east of the Euphrates river, something Washington has promised they will do. Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy to the anti-Islamic State coalition, visited Syria last week and emphasised “the need for strict adherence to prior commitments, a State Department spokeswoman said.

(Additional reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus and Ahmed Tolba in Cairo, Lesley Wroughton and Arshad Mohammed in Washington, Vladimir Soldatkin in Hangzhou, Humeyra Pamuk and Edmund Blair in Istanbul; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Giles Elgood and Anna Willard)

Blasts kill dozens in Syria as U.S.-Russia truce talks make little progress

Syrian army soldiers inspect the damage at the site of two explosions that hit the Arzouna bridge area at the entrance to Tartous, Syria

By Lisa Barrington and Roberta Rampton

BEIRUT/HANGZHOU, China (Reuters) – Explosions in government-controlled areas of Syria and a province held by Kurdish militia killed dozens on Monday, while the United States and Russia failed to make concrete progress towards a ceasefire.

Six explosions hit west of the capital Damascus, in the government-held cities of Homs and Tartous – which hosts a Russian military base – and the Kurdish-controlled northeastern province of Hasaka between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. (0500-0600 GMT), state media and a monitor said.

It was not clear if the blasts were linked and there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

More than five years of civil war have cut Syria into a patchwork of territories held by the government and an often competing array of armed factions, including Kurdish militia fighters, a loose coalition of rebels groups, and Islamic State.

The United States and Russia have been trying to broker a new truce after a cessation of hostilities agreed in February unraveled within weeks, with Washington accusing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces of violating the pact.

Their efforts were complicated on Sunday as government forces and their allies again laid siege to rebel-held eastern Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war which Assad is determined to fully recapture. His gains have relied heavily on Russian air support since September last year.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin had a longer-than-expected discussion of about 90 minutes on Monday about whether, and how, they could agree a deal, a senior U.S. administration official said.

Meeting at the G20 summit in China, they discussed getting humanitarian aid into the country, reducing violence, and cooperating on combating militant groups, the official said.

But in talks earlier on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were unable to come to terms on a ceasefire for the second time in two weeks, with U.S. officials stressing they would walk away if a pact could not be reached soon.

“If an agreement can be reached, we want to do so urgently, because of the humanitarian situation. However, we must ensure that it is an effective agreement,” the official said.

Russia says it cannot agree to a deal unless opposition fighters, backed by the United States and Middle East allies, are separated from al Qaeda-linked militants they overlap with in some areas.

For Washington, the priority is stabilizing Syria so as to destroy Islamic State, which controls territory both there and in neighboring Iraq.

NATO Turkey ally on Sunday said rebels it was backing had gained control of all areas on its border that had been held by the jihadists, depriving the ultra-hardline Islamist group of its main route to the outside world.

The announcement came some 10 days after Turkey launched its first major military incursion into Syria since the start of the war in 2011, an operation aimed as much at preventing further Kurdish territorial gains as at driving back Islamic State.

DOZENS KILLED

Two of the explosions on Monday hit the Arzouna bridge area at the entrance to the Mediterranean city of Tartous, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and state news agency SANA said. Islamic State attacked Tartous in May.

The Observatory and a city hospital put the death toll at 35, including members of the Syrian military, and said the number was likely to rise.

Syrian state television said the first explosion was a car bomb and the second a suicide belt detonated as rescue workers arrived. The blasts hit during a summer festival at Tartous, whose beaches recently featured in a government tourism video.

A car bomb meanwhile struck Homs, a city around 80 km (50 miles) east of Tartous which has repeatedly been hit by bombings claimed by Islamic State. State media said three people were killed, while the Observatory said the explosion hit an army checkpoint and four officers were killed.

West of Damascus, there was an explosion near the town of al Saboura, killing one person and injuring three, according to a police commander quoted by state media.

A motorbike also exploded in the centre of the northeastern city of Hasaka, which is controlled by the Kurdish YPG militia.

The Observatory said the blast killed three members of a YPG-affiliated security force known as the Asayish, and injured others. It said a percussion bomb also went off in the province’s Qamishli city.

The Kurdish YPG militia, a critical part of the U.S.-backed campaign against Islamic State, took almost complete control of Hasaka city in late August after a week of fighting with the government.

Islamic State confirmed that a blast in Hasaka took place but did not say whether its fighters were involved.

The YPG already controls swathes of northern Syria where Kurdish groups have established de facto autonomy since the start of the Syrian war in 2011, much to the alarm of neighboring Turkey.

Ankara sees the YPG as an extension of Kurdish militants who have waged a three-decade insurgency in Turkey and fears the creation of a Kurdish enclave in northern Syria would fuel their separatist ambitions.

(Additional reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus and Ahmed Tolba in Cairo, Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Giles Elgood)

German official calls for U.N. sanctions against Syria

A boy rides a bicycle near rubble of damaged buildings in the rebel held al-Maadi district of Aleppo, Syria,

BERLIN (Reuters) – Gernot Erler, the German government’s point man on Russia, urged the United Nations on Thursday to seek sanctions against Syria for two chlorine gas attacks on civilians, despite Moscow’s threat to veto such a measure.

“The United Nations should prepare clear sanctions, despite the Russian veto threat,” Erler told Germany’s Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung in an interview.

“Moscow is obviously more concerned about being seen as a friend of the criminal Assad regime than in taking joint action and sanctions against this provocative treaty violation,” Erler, a member of the Social Democrats, the junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition, told the newspaper.

An inquiry by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), unanimously authorized by the 15-member Security Council, also found that Islamic State militants used sulfur mustard gas.

“The findings are clear,” Erler said. He added that Russia needed to decide if it wanted to risk international isolation in this case.

Russia, a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his war with rebels fighting to topple him, and China have previously protected the Damascus government from Council action by blocking several resolutions, including a bid to refer the conflict in Syria to the International Criminal Court.

The Security Council on Tuesday began to discuss whether to impose sanctions on people or entities linked to two chlorine gas attacks on civilians that the United Nations and the global chemical weapons watchdog blamed on the Syrian government.

The report’s results have set the stage for a Security Council showdown between the five veto-wielding powers, likely pitting Russia and China against the United States, Britain and France over how to respond.

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said he is prepared to work with the United States on a response, but that first the council members must exchange analyses of the report, which he described as very complicated.

Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal brokered by Moscow and Washington. The Security Council passed a resolution that said in the event of non-compliance, including “the use of chemical weapons by anyone” in Syria, it would impose measures under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which deals with sanctions.

The Security Council would need to adopt another resolution to impose targeted sanctions – a travel ban and asset freeze – on people or entities linked to the attacks.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Turkey won’t agree truce with Syrian Kurdish militia, despite U.S. unease

Turkish armoured personnel carriers drive towards the border in Karkamis on the Turkish-Syrian border in the southeastern Gaziantep province, Turkey,

By David Dolan

KARKAMIS, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkey will not agree a truce with Kurdish militias in Syria as it considers them terrorists, officials said on Wednesday, after strains emerged with the United States over clashes between Turkish forces and the U.S.-backed Syrian fighters.

Washington has been alarmed by Turkey’s week-long incursion into Syria, saying it was “unacceptable” for its NATO ally to hit militias loyal to Kurdish-aligned Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that Washington supports to fight against Islamic State.

U.S. officials on Tuesday welcomed what appeared to be a pause in fighting between Turkish forces and rival militias, although Ankara denied assertions from Kurdish fighters in Syria that a temporary truce had been agreed.

“The Turkish Republic is a sovereign state, a legitimate state. It cannot be equated with a terrorist organization,” EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik told state-run Anadolu news agency, adding this meant there could be no “agreement between the two.”

His comments were echoed by President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, who said Turkey would continue striking Kurdish militia until they withdrew from the region where Turkish forces are fighting.

Turkey’s aim was to drive Islamic State out of a 90 km (56 miles) stretch of Syrian territory running along the border, Kalin said. Turkey has long said it wants a “buffer zone” in the area, although it has not used the term during this incursion.

After days when the border area reverberated with warplanes roaring overhead into Syria and artillery pounded Syrian sites, only the occasional thud of explosions in the distance was audible from the Turkish frontier town of Karkamis on Wednesday.

Karkamis lies just across the border from the northern Syrian town of Jarablus, which was swiftly captured from Islamic State by Turkish-backed forces when they launched the offensive dubbed “Euphrates Shield” on Aug. 24.

Since then, the Turkish army with its allies have pushed further south, seizing a string of villages in areas controlled by militias loyal to the Kurdish-backed SDF, which drove Islamic State out of the city of Manbij this month with U.S. help.

Turkey, which is battling a decades-long Kurdish insurgency at home, fears Kurdish-aligned forces will capture areas previously held by Islamic State, giving them control of an unbroken swathe of territory running along the Turkish border.

“UNACCEPTABLE”

Since the start of the campaign, the Turkish army has said it has bombarded dozens of targets that it says were held by the Kurdish YPG militia, a powerful force in the SDF. The YPG says its forces withdrew from the area long before Turkey’s assault.

Turkey has demanded the YPG cross the Euphrates river into a Kurdish-controlled canton in Syria’s northeast. U.S. officials have threatened to withdraw backing for the YPG if it did not meet that demand, but said this had mostly happened.

Turkey’s EU affairs minister said some Kurdish fighters were still on the western side and called that “unacceptable.”

Eager to avoid more clashes between Turkey and U.S.-backed Syrian fighters, the Pentagon said the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State was establishing communications channels to better coordinate in a “crowded battlespace” in Syria.

Turkey insists that it has not relented in the fight against Islamic State, which has been responsible for launching a spate of bombings inside Turkey.

Islamist militants bombed Istanbul international airport in June, killing 45 people and hammering Turkey’s already struggling tourist industry. In July, the group was blamed for an attack on a wedding in southeast Turkey that killed 56.

Interior Minister Efkan Ala said Turkey had arrested 865 people since the start of 2016, more than half of the foreigners, in its crackdown on Islamic State and preventing the would-be jihadists crossing to join militants in Syria or Iraq.

As well as driving away Islamic State out of the border area, it is determined to ensure Kurdish forces do not link up two Kurdish-controlled cantons in north Syria – one east of the Euphrates and the other in the west near the Mediterranean.

Ankara fears that, if Kurdish militia control the entire area along Turkey’s southern border with Syria, it could embolden the Kurdish militant PKK group which has fought a three-decade-long insurgency to demand autonomy on Turkish soil.

(Additional reporting by Asli Kandemir in Istanbul, Ercan Gurses in Ankara; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Anna Willard)

U.S. sets up ‘communications channels’ for crowded Syria war

A general view shows a damaged street with sandbags used as barriers in Aleppo's Saif al-Dawla

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State, eager to avoid more clashes between Turkey and U.S.-backed Syrian fighters, is establishing communications channels to better coordinate in a “crowded battlespace,” the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

“The improved coordination of armed activities in Northern Syria will seek to assure the safety of all forces,” said Pentagon spokesman Matthew Allen. “We will not discuss coordination and de-confliction procedures in detail in the interest of preserving operational security.”

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Turkey signals no let up in Syria campaign despite concerns

Turkish army tanks make their way towards the Syrian border town of Jarablus

By Edmund Blair and Asli Kandemir

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey’s army chief signaled no let up in a Syria offensive Washington has criticized for targeting U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters as well as jihadists, and said its successes showed last month’s failed coup had not dented the military’s power.

Turkish-backed forces began the offensive last week by capturing the Syrian frontier town of Jarablus from Islamic State; they then advanced on areas controlled by Kurdish-aligned militias which have U.S. support in battling jihadists.

Turkey, which is fighting a Kurdish insurgency at home, has openly said the operation dubbed “Euphrates Shield” has a dual goal of driving away Islamic State and preventing Kurdish forces extending their areas of control along the Turkish border.

Washington said the offensive by its NATO ally risked undermining the fight against Islamic State because it was focusing on Kurdish-aligned militias. Ankara says it will not take orders from anyone on how to protect the nation.

“By pursuing the Euphrates Shield operation, which is crucial for our national security and for our neighbors’ security, the Turkish Armed Forces are showing they have lost none of their strength,” Chief of General Staff Hulusi Akar said in a statement on Tuesday to mark a national holiday.

On the eve of the Victory Day holiday, President Tayyip Erdogan said the operation would continue until all threats, including that of Kurdish militia fighters, were removed from the border area.

Turkey is still reeling from an attempted coup in July in which rogue military commanders used warplanes and tanks to try to oust Erdogan and the government, exposing splits in the ranks of NATO’s second biggest military.

In a subsequent purge of suspected coup sympathizers, 80,000 people have been removed from both civilian and military duties, including many generals, officers and rank-and-file soldiers.

FLARE-UP

Echoing U.S. concerns about the Turkish offensive in Syria, French President Francois Hollande said he understood Turkey’s need to defend itself from Islamic State but that targeting Kurdish forces which were battling jihadists could further inflame the five-year-old Syrian conflict.

“Those multiple, contradictory interventions carry risks of a general flare-up,” he told a meeting of French ambassadors.

Criticism by any Western powers will add to tensions with Ankara, which has accused the United States and Europe of proving poor allies by calling for restraint as the government rounded up coup sympathizers, and failing to appreciate the depth of the threat the coup presented to Turkey’s democracy.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visited Ankara last week to try to patch up ties and voice support for the government. But this week, U.S. officials described the current direction of the offensive as “unacceptable”.

In its northern Syria offensive, Turkish forces and their rebel allies have taken a string of villages in areas controlled by the Kurdish-aligned Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and advanced toward Manbij, a city the SDF seized from Islamic State this month in a U.S.-backed campaign.

Turkey says its forces have struck multiple positions held by the Kurdish YPG militia, part of the SDF coalition.

The YPG says its forces withdrew from the region before the Turkish assault and have already crossed the Euphrates, in line with a demand from the United States to withdraw to the eastern side of the river that flows through Syria or lose U.S. support.

Turkey wants to stop Kurdish forces taking control of territory that lies between cantons to the east and west that they already hold, and so creating an unbroken Kurdish- controlled corridor on Turkey’s southern border.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Callus and John Irish in Paris, David Dolan and Nick Tattersall in Istanbul; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Ralph Boulton)

U.S. to meet target of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees: White House

Pro-refugee counter-protesters gather during another group's protest against the United States' acceptance of Syrian

By Ayesha Rascoe and Timothy Gardner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration will meet its goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees this fiscal year a month ahead of schedule and is working with Congress to increase the target by a few thousand in 2018, the White House said on Monday.

The 10,000th Syrian refugee was scheduled to arrive in the United States on Monday afternoon, national security advisor Susan Rice said in a statement.

The White House had pledged to admit at least 10,000 displaced Syrians during the current fiscal year, which wraps up at the end of September.

“While refugee admissions are only a small part of our broader humanitarian efforts in Syria and the region, the president understood the important message this decision would send, not just to the Syrian people but to the broader international community,” Rice said.

U.S. admission of Syrian refugees has been a hot button issue in the 2016 race for the White House, with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump warning that violent militants could enter the country posing as refugees.

Trump has said that if he is elected he would persuade Gulf states to bankroll safe zones for Syrian refugees so they would not have to be brought to the United States.

In addition, some Democrats in Congress have pressed to toughen the screening process for Syrian refugees.

The civil war in Syria has led to a flood of millions of refugees from Syria. But so far, the United States has offered refuge to far fewer than many of its allies have. Germany has taken in hundreds of thousands and Canada admitted nearly 30,000 between November last year and May 1.

The United States took in 29 Syrian refugees in fiscal 2011, 31 in fiscal 2012, 36 in fiscal 2013, 105 in fiscal 2014 and 1,682 in fiscal 2015, according to U.S. State Department statistics.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters the administration plans to keep the number steady at 10,000 in fiscal 2017 but increase it by a few thousand the year after. Secretary of State John Kerry will hold talks with lawmakers in Congress before the administration sets the figure for 2018. Obama leaves office on Jan. 20, 2016.

“I anticipate in the next few weeks we will have some additional news on this,” Earnest told reporters. Obama would like to see a “ramping up of those efforts” but is realistic about how quickly that could happen, he said.

(Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe, Timothy Gardner and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and James Dalgleish)

Turkish forces deepen push into Syria, draw U.S. rebuke

Turkish armoured personnel carriers drive towards the border in Karkamis on the Turkish-Syrian border in the southeastern Gaziantep province, Turkey, August 27,

By Lisa Barrington and Umit Bektas

BEIRUT/KARKAMIS, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkish-backed forces pushed deeper into northern Syria on Monday and drew a rebuke from NATO ally the United States, which said it was concerned the battle for territory had shifted away from targeting Islamic State.

At the start of Turkey’s now almost week-long cross-border offensive, Turkish tanks, artillery and warplanes provided Syrian rebel allies the firepower to capture swiftly the Syrian frontier town of Jarablus from Islamic State militants.

Since then, Turkish forces have mainly pushed into areas controlled by forces aligned to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition that encompasses the Kurdish YPG militia and which has been backed by Washington to fight the jihadists.

A group monitoring the tangled, five-year-old conflict in Syria said 41 people were killed by Turkish air strikes as Turkish forces pushed south on Sunday. Turkey denied there were any civilian deaths, saying 25 Kurdish militants were killed.

“We want to make clear that we find these clashes – in areas where ISIL is not located – unacceptable and a source of deep concern,” said Brett McGurk, U.S special envoy for the fight against Islamic State, using an acronym for the jihadists.

“We call on all armed actors to stand down,” he wrote on his official Twitter account, citing a statement from the U.S. Department of Defense.

Turkey, which is battling a Kurdish insurgency on its soil, has said its campaign has a dual goal of “cleansing” the region of Islamic State and stopping Kurdish forces filling the void and extending the area they control near Turkey’s border.

That puts Ankara at odds with Washington and adds to tensions when Turkey’s government is still reeling from last month’s failed coup, which it says Washington was too slow to condemn. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden sought to patch up ties in a visit last week, just as Turkish forces entered Syria.

“ETHNIC CLEANSING”

On Monday, Turkish-backed forces advanced on Manbij, a city about 30 km (20 miles) south of Turkey’s border captured this month by the SDF, in which Kurdish fighters play a major part, with U.S. help. The thud of artillery was heard in the Turkish border town of Karkamis.

SDF-aligned militia said they were reinforcing Manbij but insisted none of the troops in the region or the extra fighters heading to the city were from the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.

Turkey has said its warplanes and artillery have bombarded positions held by the Kurdish YPG militia in recent days. It accuses the YPG of seeking to take territory where there has not traditionally been a strong Kurdish ethnic contingent.

“The YPG is engaged in ethnic cleansing, they are placing who they want to in those places,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a news conference in Ankara, demanding Kurdish forces withdraw east of the Euphrates river, a natural boundary with areas of eastern Syria under Kurdish control.

The YPG, a powerful Syrian Kurdish militia in the SDF that Washington sees as a reliable ally against jihadists in the Syrian conflict, have dismissed the Turkish allegation and say any forces west of the Euphrates have long since left.

“Turkey’s claims that it is fighting the YPG west of the Euphrates have no basis in truth and are merely flimsy pretexts to widen its occupation of Syrian land,” Redur Xelil, chief spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, told Reuters.

U.S. Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said the U.S. “reiterated our view that the YPG must cross back to the eastern side of the Euphrates and understand that has largely occurred.”

Turkish-backed forces say they have seized a string of villages south of Jarablus in a region controlled by groups aligned to the U.S.- and Kurdish-backed SDF. They also say they have taken a few places to the west in Islamic State areas.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors Syria’s conflict, said Turkey-backed rebels had managed to seize at least 11 villages in 48 hours, bringing the total to at least 21 villages in the south and west Jarablus countryside captured since 25 August.

Syria’s conflict began in 2011 as an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. Since then it has drawn in regional states and world powers, with a proliferation of rival rebel groups, militias and jihadists adding to the complexity.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry in Beirut, Orhan Coskun and Ece Toksabay in Ankara, and Can Sezer, David Dolan and Nick Tattersall in Istanbul; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Dominic Evans)