According to the agency, on February 27, militants from the Khayyat Tahrir al-Sham * terrorist group * attempted to attack the Syrian army in the area of Behun. Syrian troops responded with fire, which also hit Turkish troops “who were in the battle formations of terrorist groups.”
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Moreover, according to the Turkish side, there were no and should not have been any units of the Turkish army in that area, the Ministry of Defense emphasized.
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“Aviation of the Aerospace Forces of Russia in the area of the settlement of Behun was not used,” the military department added.
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Last night, the governor of the border province of Turkey Hatay Rahmi Dogan said that 33 Turkish soldiers were killed and 36 injured in an air attack from the Syrian army. After that, Ankara announced the beginning of ground and air attacks on the positions of the Syrian troops.
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Omer Celik, spokesman for the ruling Justice and Development Party in Turkey, called the incident an “attack” on NATO and announced consultations with the alliance.
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In late January, the Syrian army launched an offensive in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, where terrorists fired on residential neighborhoods daily. In a month, she managed to free more than 600 square kilometers, the large city of Maaret Nuuman and the M5 highway (Damascus – Aleppo).
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Against this background, Ankara and some of its partners accused Damascus and Moscow of striking humanitarian targets and the Turkish military. Russia and Syria have repeatedly stated that the cause of instability was the actions of terrorists. As noted by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Turkey was unable to fulfill key obligations to solve the problems around Idlib, in particular, it did not dissociate the armed opposition, which was ready for dialogue with the government, from the terrorists. In Ankara, they claimed that they had fulfilled their obligations.
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Last week, Erdogan said that Ankara had not yet received a satisfactory result in negotiations with Russia, and threatened to launch a military operation in Idlib. A spokesman for the Russian leader, Dmitry Peskov, called it the worst-case scenario.
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