Turkey has announced the official start of the operation in Syria’s Idlib currently controlled by al-Nusra Front terrorists.
The Turkish General Staff has announced the start of the operation, adding that reconnaissance activities are underway, posts for control of the ceasefire are being established.
“According to the agreements reached in Astana on the creation of a de-escalation zone in Idlib, the Turkish Armed Forces as one of the countries-guarantors [of the ceasefire in Syria] started a reconnaissance operation to establish posts for the monitoring of the ceasefire on October 8,” the Turkish General Staff said in a statement obtained by Sputnik.
The official announcement comes after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that Ankara plans to deploy the country’s soldiers to Syria’s Idlib, where the so-called Free Syrian Army anti-government militants in Syria have launched an operation.
A day later, Erdogan said that “if we didn’t take our measures, bombs would fall on our cities.”
Currently, Idlib is mostly controlled by Haya’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a militant group led by al-Nusra Front terrorist group, al-Qaeda’s former Syrian affiliate. The group is not party to the agreement on setting up a de-escalation zone in Idlib agreed upon during the Syrian peace talks in Astana
Commenting on the Idlib operation on Sunday, the Turkish prime minister, Binali Yildirim, in his turn, said that Ankara’s actions in Idlib are coordinated with Moscow. The Russian Defense Ministry hasn’t yet commented on Turkey’s plans for an operation in Idlib.
The Idlib operation is the second Turkish military operation on the Syrian soil. From August 2016 until March 2017, the Euphrates Shield campaign by the Turkish army conducted also with the FSA Ankara-backed militants was conducted aiming to clear the Syrian border town of Jarablus and the surrounding area from ISIL terrorist group.
Source: Sputnik
