Turkey warns of renewed Syrian threat to Aleppo

Syrian forces are committing massacres in and around Syria's second city, Aleppo, Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu claimed yesterday.

As US warplanes bomb Islamic State forces in parts of Syria, president Bashar al-Assad's military has intensified its campaign against some rebel groups in the west and north that Washington sees as allies, including in and around Aleppo.

Ankara has been pushing for the US-led coalition to broaden its campaign to tackle Mr Assad as well as Islamic State, arguing there can be no peace in Syria if he remains in power.

“We are watching the developments in Aleppo with concern. Though the city is not on the verge of falling, it is under extreme pressure,” Mr Davutoglu said on Tuesday after meeting Turkey’s top generals.

Rebel positions

Syria’s most populous city before the war, Aleppo has been split roughly in half between opposition groups in the east and government troops in the west. Mr Assad’s forces have slowly encircled rebel positions this year trying to cut supply routes.

Mr Davutoglu said Mr Assad's forces were committing "large massacres" by barrel-bombing areas northeast and west of Aleppo under the control of the Free Syrian Army, an umbrella term for the dozens of armed groups fighting Mr Assad's forces. "If Aleppo were to fall, we in Turkey would really be confronted with a large, very serious, worrisome refugee crisis. This is why we want a safe zone," he said.

Turkey already hosts more than 1.5 million refugees from Syria's civil war and has been pushing the United States and its allies to create a safe haven for refugees on Syrian territory. Any such move on the southern fringe of its border would require a no-fly zone policed by foreign jets.

The United States continued its assault on Islamic State militants this week, conducting 14 airstrikes in recent days in Syria and Iraq, US Central Command said, three of them near the predominantly Kurdish border town of Kobani.

US criticised

Turkish president

Tayyip Erdogan

has criticised the US-led coalition’s focus on Kobani, which has been besieged by Islamic State for more than a month, and warned its attention needed to be turned to other parts of the conflict.

The Syrian civil war has killed close to 200,000 people and forced more than 3 million refugees to flee the country, according to the United Nations.

At least 11 children were killed in Damascus when mortars fell on a school in an eastern district of the Syrian capital, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war, said yesterday.

Fighters linked to al-Qaeda also took ground from moderate Syrian rebels last week in the northern province of Idlib, expanding their control.

Paris says it is providing military aid and training to the ramshackle Free Syrian Army, but has not given any specific details. Turkey has also agreed to help train the rebels, although it remains unclear when and where that will happen.

– (Reuters)