Tag Archives: Syria

U.N. aims to air drop food to ISIS-besieged city in eastern Syria

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations plans to make its first air drops of food aid in Syria, to Deir al-Zor, an eastern town of 200,000 besieged by Islamic State militants, the chair of a U.N. humanitarian task force said on Thursday.

U.N. aid agencies do not have direct access to areas held by Islamic State, including Deir al-Zor, where civilians face severe food shortages and sharply deteriorating conditions.

Jan Egeland, speaking to reporters in Geneva a day after U.N. aid convoys reached five areas, some besieged by government forces and others by rebels, said the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) had a “concrete plan” for carrying out the Deir al-Zor operation in coming days.

He said the WFP hoped to make progress reaching “the poor people inside Deir al-Zor, which is besieged by Islamic State. That can only be done by air drops,” said Egeland.

“It’s a complicated operation and would be in many ways the first of its kind,” Egeland said, giving no details of the air operation, which is far more costly than land convoys.

Egeland, who is head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, later told Reuters in Oslo: “It is either airdrops or nothing. Airdrops are a desperate measure in desperate times.”

A WFP official was not available to comment on where cargo planes would depart from or what they would carry.

Deir al-Zor is the main town in a province of the same name. The province links Islamic State’s de facto capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa with territory controlled by the militant group in neighboring Iraq.

Egeland chaired a three-hour meeting of the humanitarian task force on Syria, where he said that many member states pledged support for the attempt to reach Deir al-Zor.

Russia is Syria’s main ally in the five-year war, while Western and Arab states support rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad.

The U.N. estimates there are 486,700 people in around 15 besieged areas of Syria, and 4.6 million in hard-to-reach areas. In some, starvation deaths and severe malnutrition have been reported.

“We hope to be able to reach the remaining areas in the next days,” Egeland said, adding the group would meet again in a week.

Britain’s foreign minister Philip Hammond said in a statement: “Starvation of civilians as a method of combat is unacceptable. The international community and particularly Russia, which has unique influence, must put pressure on the Assad regime to lift sieges and grant full humanitarian access.”

In the past 24 hours, 114 U.N. trucks delivered life-saving food and medical supplies to 80,000 people in five besieged areas, enough for one month, Egeland said.

These were Madaya, Zabadani and Mouadamiya al-Sham near Damascus, which are under siege by government forces, and the villages of al-Foua and Kefraya in Idlib province, surrounded by rebel fighters.

It marked the “beginning of the task” assigned by ministers from major and regional powers who met a week ago in Munich.

But some “vital medical items” were not delivered, he said.

A spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO) said that government forces had removed some medicines for emergency and trauma care from supplies bound for Mouadamiya, but had allowed a hemodialysis machine for diabetics, medicines and nutritional supplements.

(Reporting and writing by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; additional reporting by Gwladys Fouche; Editing by Dominic Evans and Katharine Houreld)

United States wants NATO to step up fight against Islamic State

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The United States is pressing NATO to play a bigger role against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, putting Washington at odds with Germany and France which fear the strategy would risk confrontation with the alliance’s old Cold War foe Russia.

All 28 NATO allies are already part of a 66-nation anti-Islamic State coalition, so the United States is looking to NATO as an institution to bring its equipment, training and the expertise it gained leading a coalition in Afghanistan.

“It is worth exploring how NATO, as NATO, could make an appropriate contribution, leveraging for example its unique capabilities, such as force generation,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said after meeting allies at NATO headquarters in Brussels last week and referring to NATO’s know-how in drumming-up troops, planes and ships from allies.

Seeking to recapture the Islamic State strongholds of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, Washington wants a bigger European response to the chaos and failing states near Europe’s borders.

Carter’s call for NATO’s help came as defense ministers from the anti-Islamic State coalition met last week at NATO headquarters in Brussels for the first time, albeit with NATO insignia removed from the walls.

Despite support from Britain, the U.S. push has not been received well by France and Germany.

Given Russia’s concerns over NATO expansion in eastern Europe, Paris and Berlin are worried that deeper NATO involvement in Syria could be taken by Moscow as a provocation that the alliance is seeking to extend its influence.

As the Russian-backed Syrian government advance nears NATO’s southeastern border, growing hostility between Russia and Turkey only makes some members of the alliance more reluctant, diplomats say.

Notwithstanding an agreement between Russia and the United States to avoid accidental military air incidents, France and Germany worry Russia’s targeting of opposition groups other than Islamic State increases the risks.

“NATO and Russia would not be fighting a common enemy,” a NATO diplomat said.

NON-COMBAT OPTIONS

Carter has sought to distinguish between Syria’s civil war and the fight against Islamic State, saying the campaign against the militant group will go on regardless, and has pushed allies to accelerate their efforts.

In that vein, Washington tested waters by making a request for NATO to provide its surveillance AWACS aircraft to the anti-Islamic State coalition fighting militants in Syria.

Germany pushed back on the AWACS request. That has forced a compromise by which NATO will send the planes to allied countries so as to free-up allies to send more of their own equipment to fight Islamic State in Syria, diplomats said.

France also sought assurances that the AWACS request did not mean NATO as an institution was being involved more deeply in the anti-Islamic State coalition.

Still, NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Philip Breedlove said planning for a bigger alliance role was “a natural shift … a natural evolvement of the thinking.”

“All our nations are under greater pressure, so this is just beginning. There is no detail but there are lots of opportunities that are being considered,” he said.

NATO involvement in Syria could help answer critics who say the alliance has watched passively as Russia has widened its role there. It could also address concerns expressed by southern allies, such as Spain, Italy and Portugal, that NATO does not have a strategy to address risks on the Mediterranean, the entry point for huge numbers of people fleeing conflict in the Middle East.

British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said NATO might not yet be ready to move ahead along the lines suggested by Washington, “but the very fact that we brought together 45 members of the anti-IS coalition, inside NATO headquarters, shows you that we want to see a stronger governance of the coalition.”

“We want to be able to measure the progress of the campaign and to review it more regularly,” Fallon told Reuters.

For the moment, discussions on various options include more NATO training of Iraqi troops and police, as well as strengthening government departments in areas taken back from Islamic State, according a U.S. defense official.

The United States has made clear it does not see a role for Western combat troops. “Territory retaken from ISIL (Islamic State) has to be occupied and governed by people who are from the area and want to live there,” Carter said.

(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart in Washington and Sabine Siebold in Berlin; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Aid reaches besieged Syrian towns as planned

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered five besieged areas of Syria scheduled for deliveries on Wednesday in a U.N.-backed deal to deliver help to thousands of trapped residents, an aid agency source and conflict monitor said.

The Syrian government approved access to seven besieged areas after crisis talks in Damascus on Tuesday, a week ahead of a planned resumption of peace negotiations between Syria’s warring parties.

The United Nations estimates there are 486,700 people in around 15 besieged areas of Syria, and 4.6 million people in hard-to-reach areas. In some, starvation deaths and severe malnutrition have been reported.

One hundred truckloads of aid were given to about 100,000 people, the United Nations said, as convoys entered Madaya, Zabadani and Mouadamiya al-Sham near Damascus which have been under siege by government forces, and the villages of al-Foua and Kefraya in Idlib province, which are surrounded by rebel fighters.

There have been several aid deliveries to Madaya and Zabadani and to al-Foua and Kefraya this year, but each has to be carefully synchronized between the warring sides so that convoys enter simultaneously.

The Syrian Red Crescent coordinated with the United Nations on the deliveries, which include wheat and high-energy foods, with medical teams being sent to some areas.

The world body has demanded unhindered access to all besieged areas of the country, where it says hundreds of thousands of people are trapped by fighting and deliberate blockades by various warring sides.

In Madaya, near the border with Lebanon, dozens have starved to death after months of siege by government forces and their allies.

In the city of Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria, parts of which are under siege by Islamic State militants, unverified reports have said up to 20 people have died of starvation.

Deir al-Zor was one of the seven areas to which the aid convoys were expected to head within the next few days, the United Nations said.

Yacoub el-Hillo, U.N. humanitarian and resident coordinator in Syria, said aid operations must continue beyond recent efforts to restart peace talks, but a solution to the root of the problem must also be found.

A humanitarian task force will meet in Geneva on Thursday to take stock of humanitarian access to besieged areas, a statement from the office of the special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said. That was in line with an agreement on humanitarian assistance reached in Munich last week by major and regional powers.

UNRELENTING FIGHTING

Syria’s opposition says it will not negotiate with Damascus until sieges imposed by government forces and their allies have been lifted – one of many issues that led to a suspension of the peace talks in Geneva earlier this month.

Talks are scheduled to resume on Feb. 25, but fighting and air strikes continue unabated throughout the country, where 250,000 people have been killed in five years of war.

In the town immediately next to Mouadamiya, Daraya, the Syrian army and allied forces continue a major offensive to take back the rural suburbs of Damascus still in rebel hands.

In Deraa city, south of Damascus, jets believed to be Russian pounded insurgent positions on Wednesday near a now-closed rebel-held border crossing with Jordan. The attacks appeared aimed at cutting rebel supply lines.

A fighter from al-Tawhid al-Janub Brigade, part of the Southern Front rebel alliance, said the bombing of the old quarter of Deraa city, which has been in rebel hands for nearly three years and whose residents have fled since the start of the conflict, was the heaviest in over two years. The army controls the rest of the city.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington in Beirut, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, Kinda Makiyeh and Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by John Davison; Editing by Dominic , John Stonestreet and Peter Cooney)

Kurds’ advance in Syria divides U.S. and Turkey as Russia bombs

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – The rapid advance of U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, taking advantage of Russian air strikes to seize territory near the Turkish border, has infuriated Ankara and threatened to drive a wedge between NATO allies.

Washington has long seen the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its YPG military wing as its best chance in the battle against Islamic State in Syria – to the chagrin of fellow NATO member Turkey, which sees the group as terrorists and fears it will stir up greater unrest among its own Kurdish minority.

Russian bombing has transformed the five-year-old Syrian civil war in recent weeks, turning the momentum decisively in favor of Moscow’s ally President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian army has come within 15 miles of the Turkish border and says it aims to seal it off altogether, closing the main lifeline into rebel territory for years and recapturing Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war.

Meanwhile, the YPG has exploited the situation, seizing ground from other Syrian opposition groups in the area.

Washington says it does not believe the Kurds are coordinating directly with Moscow. But the YPG’s advance may represent a masterstroke by Russia, which could benefit from any discord between NATO allies Turkey and the United States.

“Now this is the YPG’s dilemma: Will it continue with America or Russia? The consequences of this strategic choice will influence Syria’s future, as well as the ongoing clashes in Turkey,” said Metin Gurcan, an independent security analyst and retired Turkish military officer.

Turkey has shelled YPG positions inside Syria for four straight days. Ankara sees the militia as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a three-decade insurgency for autonomy in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast.

Turkey also portrays the Kurds as a pawn of Russia. Relations between the former Cold War rivals hit a low last year after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane over Syria.

Turkey now accuses Russia of deliberately targeting civilians in Syria, including hospitals struck this week, in what it calls a “war crime” to depopulate territory ahead of a government advance. Moscow denies this and accuses Turkey of covertly supporting Syrian jihadist militant groups.

The United States, which has supported the Kurdish fighters elsewhere in battle against Islamic State, has called for the YPG to stop actions that would heighten friction in northern Syria. It has also urged Ankara to stop shelling YPG positions.

Washington has seen no evidence that the YPG are cooperating with the Russians, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said at a briefing this week.

DECADES OF REPRESSION

Some 30 million Kurds are estimated to live in Iran, Turkey, Iraq and in Syria. Syria’s Kurds are the largest ethnic minority and suffered decades of repression under President Bashar al-Assad and his father before him.

Under the Damascus regime, Kurds were forbidden from learning their own language, frequently evicted from their land and even denied full citizenship. Their region is home to a chunk of Syria’s estimated 2.5 billion barrels of crude oil reserves, but Kurds enjoyed little benefit.

Now, Kurds have started to carve out a fiefdom in the north of fragmenting Syria, similar to the autonomy enjoyed by their kin in northern Iraq.

“Russia is using this instrument to put Turkey in a difficult position,” Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said this week, vowing to prevent the YPG from expanding its territory.

In the early stages of Syria’s civil war, there were signs Turkey was willing to work with the PYD and other Kurdish groups if they met three demands: remain resolutely opposed to Assad, vow not to seek autonomy through violence or before the wider conflict was resolved, and pose no threat to Turkey.

“We have no problem with their aspirations … What we do not want from any group is that they use this situation opportunistically to impose their will by force,” a senior Turkish government official told Reuters in August 2013, days after PYD co-chair Saleh Muslim was invited to Istanbul for talks.

RELATIONS SOUR

But relations soon deteriorated, reaching a nadir in late 2014, when Islamic State fighters besieged the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani on the Turkish border for four months as Turkish tanks looked on from surrounding hills.

Turkey allowed Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces through its territory to help defend the town, but its failure to intervene directly in support of the YPG, even as a U.S.-led coalition carried out air strikes against Islamic State, infuriated Kurds in both Syria and Turkey.

That added to pressure on the Turkish government’s relationship with its own Kurds. PKK attacks on Turkish security forces last year helped put an end to a more than two-year ceasefire between the government and the insurgents, and the once-dormant conflict within Turkey has since stayed hot.

Wary of an escalation, Washington has urged all parties to focus on the “common threat” of Islamic State, calling on Turkey to cease cross-border artillery fire and on the YPG not to seize new territory from groups that Turkey supports.

Turkey has repeatedly criticized the United States for its position, saying that Washington should deem the Syrian Kurds terrorists, as it does with the PKK, and halt support.

The Syrian Kurdish militia has not explained the aim of its latest advance but a source told Reuters on Jan. 28 it planned to seize the stretch of border held by Islamic State east of Azaz – the only part of the frontier still in the hands of the jihadist group.

But the YPG’s advance into territory held by other rebel groups looks likely to continue for now, causing headaches for Washington as it tries to manage its strategic relationship with Turkey and check Russia’s influence in the region.

“The YPG is pushing as far as it can.… (Its) focus right now is making the most of its momentum,” said Gurcan, the analyst. “This has put the U.S. in a very bad position.”

(Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley and Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul; Warren Strobel in Washington; Tom Perry in Beirut and Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman; writing by Daren Butler; editing by David Dolan, Nick Tattersall and Peter Graff)

EU ‘silent’ on migrant rights abuses in Turkey, rapporteur says

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Anxiety about refugees streaming to its shores has led the European Union to turn an apparent blind eye to rights abuses in Turkey, whose help the EU needs to reduce the migrant influx, the European Parliament’s rapporteur on Turkey said on Tuesday.

The number of Syrian war refugees in neighboring Turkey has swelled to 2.6 million and the EU has promised Ankara 3 billion euros to help it cope with them in the hope this will dissuade many from making onward journeys to Europe.

EU officials have also voiced renewed support for Turkey’s long-held aspiration of joining the 28-nation bloc if it does more to stem the outflow of migrants to Europe.

The European Parliament’s rapporteur on Turkey said the delay of a European Commission progress report on Ankara’s EU qualifications until after the November 2015 election, won by the party that backs President Tayyip Erdogan, suggested the bloc was staying “silent” in the face of a deteriorating rights record in Turkey.

Turkish security-force operations against Kurdish militants in southeast Turkey since July have killed at least 160 civilians, according to rights groups. Journalists and academics critical of the government’s policies have been detained.

“The (EU) accession process … should be connected to democratic reforms or rule of law or what’s happening with the Kurdish question,” rapporteur Kati Piri told Reuters. “The European Union gave a pretty bad signal by connecting it so directly to migration.”

Ankara’s peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) collapsed in July, ending a ceasefire. Some 400,000 people have been displaced since the conflict reignited, Piri said in the telephone interview.

“If the EU does not engage actively in calling for an immediate ceasefire and the peace process to be resumed, we could face another refugee inflow, and this time it will be coming from Turkey,” she told reporters in Brussels, presenting the draft report that will be voted on by European lawmakers.

STEPS TO CURB FLOW

More than 1 million migrants reached Europe via illegal routes in 2015, and another million will seek to do so in 2016, according to the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Turkey has yet to receive any of the 3 billion euros of EU aid, but Piri said the government had boosted efforts to stop refugees, including blocking Syrians coming from Jordan and Lebanon and breaking up people-smuggling rings.

But it will have to lift its geographical limitation on accepting refugees in order to meet EU criteria, she said.

Turkey only considers those fleeing Europe to be refugees, although there has been no such migration for decades, and gives those from other regions only limited rights to live and work.

“This will be a very important point in the coming months. It is one of the conditions Turkey needs to fulfill for visa liberalization with the EU. This could be a huge step forward for improving the lives of asylum seekers in Turkey,” said Piri.

Turkey opened membership talks with the EU in 2005 but the slow pace of reforms there, a dispute over the divided island of Cyprus and worries in Europe about taking in a country with a large Muslim population has stalled its accession bid.

(Additional reporting by Francesco Guarascio in Brussels; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mark Heinrich)

U.N. envoy wins Syria government green light for aid convoys

GENEVA (Reuters) – The Syrian government has approved access to seven besieged areas and U.N. convoys are expected to set off in days, the United Nations said on Tuesday after crisis talks in Damascus.

U.N. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura, who won the green light at talks with Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem, said the world body would test the government commitment to allow access on Wednesday but gave no details.

Their meeting in Damascus came at a time when government forces have been advancing rapidly with the aid of Russian air strikes, and just days before an internationally agreed pause in fighting is due to take effect.

De Mistura said they had discussed the issue of humanitarian access to areas besieged by all sides in the five-year war.

“It is clear it is the duty of the government of Syria to want to reach every Syrian person wherever they are and allow the U.N. to bring humanitarian aid,” de Mistura said in a statement. “Tomorrow we test this.”

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that Syria had approved access to Deir al-Zor; Foua and Kafraya in Idlib; and Madaya, Zabadani, Kafr Batna and Mouadamiya al-Sham in rural Damascus.

“Humanitarian agencies and partners are preparing convoys for these areas, to depart as soon as possible in the coming days,” the OCHA said. It was not immediately clear whether the convoys would begin on Wednesday, as de Mistura had indicated.

Nor was there any indication of a breakthrough on access to areas besieged by armed opposition groups.

U.N.-backed peace talks are scheduled to resume in Geneva on Feb. 25, after de Mistura suspended a first round earlier this month.

Last Friday global powers meeting in Munich agreed to the pause in fighting in the hope that this could allow the talks to resume, but the deal does not take effect until the end of this week and was not signed by the Syrian warring parties.

“We are witnessing a degradation on the ground that cannot wait,” U.N. spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told a news briefing. “The reason (de Mistura) suspended (the talks) was, as you know, that cities were still being bombed, people were still being starved on the ground.”

SUPPLY ROUTES

The Syrian government is meanwhile advancing in the north of the country with Russian air support. Damascus says its main objectives are to recapture Aleppo – Syria’s biggest city before the war – and seal the Turkish border, lifeline of rebel-held territory for years.

Those would be the biggest victories for Damascus of the war so far, and would all but end rebel hopes of overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad, the goal they have pursued since 2011 with the support of the West, Arab states and Turkey.

Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Hussam Aala, said in an interview in the daily Tribune de Geneve: “We have done all we could to facilitate the passage of aid convoys in January and February.”

“The advance of the Syrian army in this region has allowed us to break the siege imposed against two towns, Nubul and al-Zahra. It opened the way for the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to deliver aid to 70,000 residents. Our objective was to cut all the supply routes for arms and for men to the terrorist groups armed by Turkey.”

The United Nations has reported that hospitals have been struck in northern Syria in areas where Russian and Syrian warplanes are launching air strikes as part of their advance.

U.N. rights spokesman Rupert Colville condemned the air strikes on hospitals and schools in Idlib and Aleppo provinces.

“If it’s deliberate, intentional targeting, then it may amount a war crime. But at this point, we’re not in a position to make that judgment. Ultimately that’s only a court that can make that judgment, and you need sufficient evidence,” he said.

“Clearly those two, both Russian and Syrian planes, are very active in this area. So obviously they should know who is responsible.”

Russian news agencies quoted a Russian Defence Ministry spokesman as saying on Tuesday that Russia’s Caspian Sea flotilla did not have a boat capable of firing a ballistic missile on the hospital in Idlib province.

International humanitarian law says hospitals and health care personnel must be protected, Colville said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Kevin Liffey, Katharine Houreld and Peter Graff)

Turkey seeks allies’ support for ground operation as Syria war nears border

ANKARA/ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey, Saudi Arabia and some European allies want ground troops deployed in Syria as a Russian-backed government advance nears NATO’s southeastern border, Turkey’s foreign minister said, but Washington has so far ruled out a major offensive.

Syrian government forces made fresh advances on Tuesday, as did Kurdish militia, both at the expense of rebels whose positions have been collapsing in recent weeks under the Russian-backed onslaught.

The offensive, supported by Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias as well as Russian air strikes, has brought the Syrian army to within 25 km (15 miles) of Turkey’s frontier, while Kurdish fighters, regarded by Ankara as hostile insurgents, have extended their presence along the border.

The advances have increased the risk of a military confrontation between Russia and Turkey. Turkish artillery returned fire into Syria for a fourth straight day on Tuesday, targeting the Kurdish YPG militia which Ankara says is being backed by Moscow.

“Some countries like us, Saudi Arabia and some other Western European countries have said that a ground operation is necessary,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Reuters in an interview.

However, this kind of action could not be left to regional powers alone. “To expect this only from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar is neither right nor realistic. If such an operation is to take place, it has to be carried out jointly, like the (coalition) air strikes,” he said.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said the “brutal operation” by Russian and Syrian forces was aimed at forging a YPG corridor along Turkey’s border, something Ankara has long feared would fuel Kurdish separatist ambition on its own soil.

Turkey accused Russia on Monday of an “obvious war crime” after missile attacks in northern Syria killed scores of people, and warned the YPG it would face the “harshest reaction” if it tried to capture a town near the Turkish border.

Russian air support for the Syrian government offensive has transformed the balance of power in the five-year-old war in the past three weeks.

World powers meeting in Munich last week agreed to a pause in the fighting, but that is not set to begin until the end of this week and was not signed by the warring Syrian parties.

The U.N. Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, held talks with Syria’s foreign minister on Tuesday aimed at securing a cessation of hostilities and said Damascus had a duty to let the world body bring in humanitarian aid.

Damascus says its objectives are to recapture Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city before the war, and seal off the border with Turkey that has served as the main supply route into rebel-held territory for years.

Those would be the government’s biggest victories of the war so far and probably end rebel hopes of overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad by force, their objective since 2011 with the encouragement of the West, Arab states and Turkey.

SYRIAN MILITARY GAINS

Kurdish forces continued their push eastwards toward Islamic State-held territory northeast of Aleppo.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group which monitors the war, said the Kurdish-backed Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) – of which the YPG is a part – took a village near the town of Marea. That is the last major settlement before territory held by the radical militants stretching into Iraq.

The Syrian army also made advances, with state media saying it had taken two villages north of Aleppo near the town of Tal Rifaat, which fell to the SDF on Monday. With the help of Russian air strikes it also advanced from the coastal city of Latakia, fighting to take the town of Kansaba.

With hundreds of thousands trapped in areas the government aims to seize, Turkey and others accuse Moscow of deliberately firing on civilian targets such as hospitals to force residents to flee and depopulate territory.

Almost 50 civilians were killed when missiles hit at least five medical facilities and two schools in rebel-held areas on Monday, according to the United Nations, which called the attacks a blatant violation of international law.

At least 14 were killed in the northern town of Azaz, the last rebel stronghold before the border with Turkey north of Aleppo. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said a Russian missile was responsible and vowed that Turkey would not let Azaz fall into YPG hands.

Russia’s foreign ministry said Turkey was using Azaz as a supply route for Islamic State and “other terrorist groups”, while the Kremlin strongly rejected Turkish accusations it had committed a war crime after the missile strikes.

“We categorically do not accept such statements, the more so as every time those making these statements are unable to prove their unfounded accusations in any way,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“Our relations (with Turkey) are in a deep crisis. Russia regrets this. We are not the initiators of this.”

DOUBTS OVER GROUND TROOPS

The advances by the YPG risk creating friction between Turkey and its allies, including the United States.

Ankara sees the Syrian Kurdish militia as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has fought a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy in Turkey’s southeast. But the United States sees the YPG as one of the few effective ground forces fighting Islamic State militants in Syria, and has lent the group military support.

Washington has so far ruled out sending its own ground troops into Syria, apart from small numbers of special forces.

Sunni Arab Gulf states including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) said this month they were ready to send ground forces as part of an international coalition against Islamic State, providing Washington takes the lead.

But Turkey’s focus on the YPG means it cannot necessarily count on support from NATO, which, while reluctant to pressure Ankara in public, is working behind closed doors to discourage it from targeting the Kurds and escalating with Russia.

(Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington in Beirut, Darya Korsunskaya and Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow, Robin Emmott in Brussels, Noah Barkin in Berlin, Daren Butler in Istanbul, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; writing by David Dolan and Nick Tattersall; editing by Peter Graff and David Stamp)

For veteran Turkish smuggler, only an army could stop migrant flow

IZMIR, Turkey (Reuters) – Demand has never been higher for the services of Turkish smuggler Dursun, who has taken migrants to Europe for more than decade, and he says nothing short of an army could stamp out his illicit trade.

The EU is counting on Ankara to stem the flow of migrants to Europe after more than a million arrived last year, mainly illegally by sea from Turkey, in the continent’s worst migration crisis since World War Two.

But the task of policing Turkey’s coastline may be beyond its stretched security forces, even with the help of Western allies. NATO sent ships to the Aegean on Thursday to help Turkey and Greece stop criminal networks smuggling migrants.

“Turkey would have to put soldiers on all the beaches,” said the burly Dursun, 30, who has spent three short prison spells in Greece for piloting motor boats full of migrants into Europe. “You have to put thousands of soldiers on the beaches,” he said in the coastal city of Izmir, declining to give his last name.

The Turkish government is under growing pressure from the EU following a $3.3 billion aid deal for the country last year, aimed at slowing the flow of migrants. Thousands died making the crossing in 2015, and the exodus has also strained security and social systems in some EU states and fueled support for anti-foreigner groups.

Ankara has stepped up patrols of its 2,600 km Aegean coast, deploying more coastguard and police and increasing the punishment for the smugglers it catches, especially if their actions led to the deaths of migrants.

While Turkey boasts the second-largest army in the NATO alliance, it is also fighting Kurdish militants in the southeast and has a heavy military presence on its border with Syria where a civil war has raged for five years, the main source of the current refugee crisis.

Namik Kemal Nazli, governor of the Ayvalik district near Izmir, said a big problem facing authorities was the fact that much of the coastline was remote and relatively unpopulated, with many places where smugglers could hide.

“It is hard to control the entire coastline and they are exploiting this,” he said.

DANGEROUS ROUTES

Western diplomats are sympathetic to the difficulties of managing a jagged coast line with plenty of blind spots. But they say Ankara can still do more, both with policing its shores and in tracing criminal gangs. They also say it should do a better job of deterring illegal migrants, especially as some have been caught multiple times trying to make the crossing.

Illegal migrants are usually fingerprinted after being caught. Depending on their nationality, many are released, free to try to reach Europe again.

Turkey, which has taken in more than 2.6 million refugees since the start of the Syrian civil war, says it needs more help from the West. Its Minister for EU Affairs Volkan Bozkir said last week that solving the refugee crisis was not just Turkey’s job, urging European countries to cooperate with Ankara on border controls and information sharing.

Yet the flood of refugees only increases, with more than 80,000 arriving in Europe by boat during the first six weeks of this year – mainly from Turkey to Greece – and more than 400 dying as they tried to cross, according to UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency.

More than 2,000 people a day are now risking their lives to make the journey, UNHCR said last week. The cold winter weather can mean cheaper passage but a more dangerous journey.

Smugglers are taking riskier sea routes to avoid the police crackdown, said Abby Dwommoh of the International Organization of Migration.

“When interdiction measures go up, smugglers and the migrants tend to find ways around them,” she told Reuters. “The numbers are overwhelming for any country to deal with.”

MORE CAUTIOUS

When Dursun started out, there was only a trickle of refugees from Eritrea and Somalia; there were no Syrians and only a few smugglers. Now, the courtyard of a mosque in the rundown neighborhood of Basmane in Izmir where he operates is filled with Syrians trying to make deals with smugglers – just a few blocks from a police station.

Even though police are more vigilant, Dursun said there was nothing they can do unless a smuggler was caught on a beach with a group of refugees. As he spoke, he pointed out other smugglers walking past. Locals say it has become a popular occupation, to which neighborhood drug dealers have switched.

Still, the native of Turkey’s Black Sea coast says he’s become more cautious and no longer captains the boats, despite the lucrative payment of 2,000 euros a trip.

Instead, he brings the migrants and refugees to the setting off points by minibus, coordinating with others in a chain that includes lookouts and those who assemble the groups of refugees.

“If the driver is alone and gets arrested, but nobody saw him transport refugees and there were no refugees in the car, he will be out again straight away,” he said.

Punishments have become much harsher. Recently, two ring leaders were sentenced to 15 and 20 years in jail, he said.

On a recent stormy day, the hotels in Cesme, about an hour’s drive from Izmir, were filled with migrants who were waiting for the weather to break before setting out from Europe.

One hotel manager, who declined to give his name, said even if NATO “shut down the sea” to stop smugglers, that wouldn’t deter migrants from seeking to reach Europe.

“Of course they would look for other ways.”

(Additional reporting by Melih Aslan; Editing by David Dolan and Pravin Char)

Death toll rises as missiles hit three hospitals, school in Syrian towns

AMMAN/BEIRUT (Reuters) – About 50 civilians were killed when missiles hit five medical centers and two schools in rebel-held Syrian towns on Monday, the United Nations and residents said.

The carnage occurred as Russian-backed Syrian troops intensified their push toward the rebel stronghold of Aleppo.

Fourteen people were killed in the town of Azaz near the Turkish border when missiles slammed into a school sheltering families fleeing the offensive and a children’s hospital, two residents and a medic said.

Bombs also hit another refugee shelter south of the town and a convoy of trucks, another resident said.

“We have been moving scores of screaming children from the hospital,” medic Juma Rahal said.

At least two children were killed and scores of people injured, he said.

Activists posted video online purporting to show the damaged hospital. Three crying babies lay in incubators in a ward littered with broken medical equipment. Reuters could not independently verify the video.

In a separate incident, missiles hit another hospital in the town of Marat Numan in Idlib province, in northwestern Syria, said the French president of the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) charity, which was supporting the hospital.

“There were at least seven deaths among the personnel and the patients, and at least eight MSF personnel have disappeared, and we don’t know if they are alive,” Mego Terzian told Reuters.

“The author of the strike is clearly…either the government or Russia,” he said, adding that it was not the first time MSF facilities in Syria had been attacked.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence across the country, said one male nurse was killed and five female nurses, a doctor and one male nurse are believed to be under the rubble in the MSF hospital.

Also in Marat Numan, another strike hit the National Hospital on the north edge of town, killing two nurses, the Observatory said.

VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the attacks, which the U.N. said killed close to 50 civilians, were a blatant violation of international laws.

“These incidents cast a shadow on the commitments made at the ISSG (International Syria Support Group) meeting in Munich on Feb. 11,” U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said.

The United States also condemned the intensified bombing of northern Syria and said it ran counter to commitments made by world powers in Munich last week to reduce hostilities.

Residents in both towns blamed Russian strikes, saying the planes deployed were more numerous and the munitions more powerful than the Syrian military typically used.

“The hospitals hit today have been rendered completely non-functioning…such attacks, whether deliberate or not, deprive people of the very limited services still available in the country,” a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

Rescue workers and rights groups say Russian bombing has killed scores of civilians at market places, hospitals, schools and residential areas in Syria. Western countries also say Russia has been attacking mostly Western-backed insurgent groups.

But Moscow has said it is targeting terrorist groups and dismissed any suggestion it has killed civilians since beginning its air campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in September.

The town of Azaz has been the scene of fierce fighting as Kurdish anti-government forces advance from the west. They have reached the edge of town, only a few kilometres away from the main Bab al Salam border crossing. The Syrian army is advancing from the south.

Both the Kurds and the army want to wrest control of that stretch of border with Turkey from the insurgents that currently hold Azaz.

Russian bombing raids on rebel fighters are helping the Syrian army to advance toward Aleppo, the country’s largest city and commercial center before the conflict. If the army takes the city, it will by the Syrian government’s biggest victory of the war.

(Additional reporting by Pauline Mevel in Paris; Editing by Katharine Houreld)

Turkey vows ‘harsh reaction’ as missiles hit Syria town

KIEV/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Turkey warned Kurdish militia fighters in northern Syria on Monday they would face the “harshest reaction” if they tried to capture a town near the Turkish border, and accused Russia of a missile attack there that killed at least 14 civilians.

An offensive supported by Russian bombing and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias has brought the Syrian army to within 15 miles of Turkey’s border. The Kurdish YPG militia has exploited the situation, seizing ground from Syrian rebels to extend its presence along the frontier.

Almost 50 civilians were killed when missiles hit at least five medical facilities and two schools in rebel-held areas of Syria on Monday, according to the United Nations, which called the attacks a blatant violation of international laws.

At least 14 were killed in the town of Azaz, the last rebel stronghold before the border with Turkey, when missiles hit a children’s hospital and a school sheltering refugees, a medic and two residents said.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said a Russian missile had hit the buildings and that many civilians including children had been killed.

Turkey shelled YPG positions for a third day to try to stop its fighters seizing Azaz, just 5 miles from the border. Ankara fears the Kurdish militia, backed by Russia, are trying to secure the last stretch of around 60 miles along the Syrian border not already under its control.

“We will not allow Azaz to fall,” Davutoglu told reporters on his plane on the way to Ukraine.

YPG fighters would already have taken Azaz and Tal Rifaat further south had it not been for Turkish artillery firing at them over the weekend, he said.

“If they approach again they will see the harshest reaction,” he said.

The standoff has increased the risk of direct confrontation between Russia and NATO member Turkey.

The Syrian civil war, reshaped by Russia’s intervention last September, has gone into an even higher gear since the United Nations sought to revive peace talks. These were suspended earlier this month in Geneva before they got off the ground.

World powers agreed in Munich on Friday to a cessation of hostilities in Syria to allow humanitarian aid to be delivered, but the deal does not take effect until the end of this week and was not signed by any warring parties.

U.N ENVOY IN DAMASCUS

U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura made a surprise visit to Damascus on Monday and will hold talks with Syria’s foreign minister on Tuesday, a Syrian government official told Reuters. The talks will include discussion of the resumption of the Geneva peace talks later this month, the official said.

In a further clouding of the Munich deal, Assad said on Monday that any ceasefire did not mean each side had to stop using weapons, and that nobody was capable of securing the conditions for one within a week.

At a news conference in Kiev, Davutoglu doubted Russia’s commitment to any such deal to cease hostilities, pointing to comments from Moscow that it would continue its air strikes regardless.

Russia, Davutoglu said, had a clear objective: “They want to have just two options in front of the international community: Daesh or Assad,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

Turkey is enraged by the expansion of Kurdish influence in northern Syria, fearing it will encourage separatist ambitions among its own Kurds. It considers the YPG a terrorist group.

Davutoglu said Turkey would make the Menagh air base north of the city of Aleppo “unusable” if the YPG, which seized it over the weekend from Syrian insurgents, did not withdraw.

He warned the YPG not to move east of the Afrin region or west of the Euphrates River, long a “red line” for Ankara.

Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz said Ankara was not considering sending troops to Syria, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency.

Syria’s rebels, some backed by the United States, Turkey and their allies, say the YPG is fighting with the Syrian military and its backers, including Russia, against them in the five-year-old civil war. The YPG denies this.

South of Azaz, the Kurdish-backed Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance, of which the YPG is a member, took around 70 percent of the town of Tal Rifaat, according to the Syrian Observatory, which monitors the war.

HOSPITALS HIT

Tens of thousands have fled to Azaz from towns and villages where there is heavy fighting between the Syrian army and militias.

“We have been moving scores of screaming children from the hospital,” said medic Juma Rahal, following the missile strikes. At least two children were killed and ambulances ferried scores of injured people to Turkey for treatment, he said.

French charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) meanwhile said seven people were killed and at least eight staff were missing after missiles hit a hospital in the province of Idlib, west of Aleppo, in a separate incident.

“The author of the strike is clearly…either the government or Russia,” MSF president Mego Terzian said.

Russian Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova said Russian air strikes were targeting Islamic State infrastructure and she had no reason to believe that Russian planes had bombed civilian sites in Idlib.

“We are confident that (there is) no way could it be done by our defense forces. This contradicts our ideology,” she said in Geneva.

Syria’s ambassador to Russia meanwhile said U.S. war planes were responsible.

“Concerning the hospital which was destroyed, in actual fact it was destroyed by the American Air Force. The Russian Air Force has nothing to do it with,” Ambassador Riad Haddad told Rossiya 24 television.

Ankara views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a 31-year-old insurgency for autonomy in southeast Turkey. But Washington, which does not see the YPG as terrorists, supports the group in the fight against Islamic State in Syria.

That has left Turkey dangerously exposed, unable to count on the support of its NATO allies as it campaigns against the YPG, but also threatened by Islamic State fighters, as well as Syrian government forces and their backers including Russia.

Turkish financial markets were weaker on Monday on fears about the situation on the border, with the lira underperforming emerging markets currencies, its dollar bonds selling off heavily, and its default insurance costs rising.

(Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington in Beirut, Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul, Tulay Karadeniz, Orhan Coskun and Ece Toksabay in Ankara, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Jack Stubbs in Moscow; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by David Dolan, Giles Elgood and Pravin Char)