Tag Archives: Syria

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)

Samples confirm Islamic State used mustard gas in Iraq, diplomat says

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Islamic State militants attacked Kurdish forces in Iraq with mustard gas last year, the first known use of chemical weapons in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a diplomat said, based on tests by the global chemical weapons watchdog.

A source at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed that laboratory tests had come back positive for the sulfur mustard, after around 35 Kurdish troops were sickened on the battlefield last August.

The OPCW will not identify who used the chemical agent. But the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because the findings have not yet been released, said the result confirmed that chemical weapons had been used by Islamic State fighters.

The samples were taken after the soldiers became ill during fighting against Islamic State militants southwest of Erbil, capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.

The OPCW already concluded in October that mustard gas was used last year in neighboring Syria. Islamic State has declared a “caliphate” in territory it controls in both Iraq and Syria and does not recognize the frontier.

Experts believe that the sulfur mustard either originated from an undeclared Syrian chemical stockpile, or that militants have gained the basic know how to develop and conduct a crude chemical attack with rockets or mortars.

Iraq’s chemical arsenal was mainly destroyed in the Saddam era, although U.S. troops encountered some old Saddam-era chemical munitions during the 2003-2011 U.S. occupation.

Syria gave up its own chemical weapons, including stockpiles of sulfur mustard, under international supervision after hundreds of civilians were killed with sarin nerve gas in a Damascus suburb in 2013, an attack Western countries blame on President Bashar al-Assad’s government, which denies it.

Sulfur mustard is a Class 1 chemical agent, which means it has very few uses outside chemical warfare. Used with lethal effectiveness in World War One, it causes severe delayed burns to the eyes, skin and respiratory tract.

(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Peter Graff)

Russia keeps bombing despite Syria truce, Assad vows to fight on

MUNICH/AMMAN (Reuters) – Major powers agreed on Friday to a pause in combat in Syria, but Russia pressed on with bombing in support of its ally President Bashar al-Assad, who vowed to fight until he regained full control of the country.

Although billed as a potential breakthrough, the “cessation of hostilities” agreement does not take effect for a week, at a time when Assad’s government is poised to win its biggest victory of the war with the backing of Russian air power.

If implemented, the deal hammered out at five hours of late night talks in Munich would allow humanitarian aid to reach besieged towns. It was described by the countries that took part as a rare diplomatic success in a conflict that has fractured the Middle East, killed at least 250,000 people, made 11 million homeless and sent hundreds of thousands fleeing into Europe.

But several Western countries said there was no hope for progress without a halt to the Russian bombing, which has decisively turned the balance of power in favor of Assad.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that if the peace plan fails, more foreign troops could enter the conflict.

“If the Assad regime does not live up to its responsibilities and if the Iranians and the Russians do not hold Assad to the promises that they have made…then the international community obviously is not going to sit there like fools and watch this. There will be an increase of activity to put greater pressure on them,” Kerry, who was in Munich, told Dubai-based Orient TV.

“There is a possibility there will be additional ground troops.”

U.S. President Barack Obama has ruled out sending U.S. ground troops to Syria, but Saudi Arabia this month offered ground forces to fight Islamic State.

Rebels said the town of Tal Rifaat in northern Aleppo province was the target of intensive bombing by Russian planes on Friday morning. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring body, said warplanes believed to be Russian also attacked towns in northern Homs.

The news agency AFP quoted Assad as saying he would continue to fight terrorism while talks took place. He would retake the entire country, although this could take a long time, he said.

Another week of fighting would give the Damascus government and its Russian, Lebanese and Iranian allies time to press on with the encirclement of Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city before the war, which they are now on the verge of capturing.

They are also close to sealing the Turkish border, lifeline of rebel territory for years.

Those two victories would reverse years of insurgent gains, effectively ending the rebels’ hopes of dislodging Assad through force, the cause they have fought for since 2011 with the encouragement of Arab states, Turkey and the West.

The cessation of hostilities agreement falls short of a formal ceasefire, since it was not signed by the main warring parties – the opposition and government forces.

Implementing it will now be the key, Kerry said: “What we need to see in the next few days are actions on the ground.”

Two Syrian rebel commanders told Reuters they had been sent “excellent quantities” of ground-to-ground Grad missiles by foreign backers in recent days to help confront the Russian-backed offensive.

Foreign opponents of Assad including Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been supplying vetted rebel groups with weapons via a Turkey-based operations center. Some of the vetted groups have received military training overseen by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

RUSSIAN TARGETS

Russia suggested it might not stop its air strikes, even when the cessation of hostilities takes effect in a week.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would not stop bombing fighters from Islamic State and a rebel group called the Nusra Front, which is affiliated with al Qaeda, neither of which were covered by the cessation deal: “Our airspace forces will continue working against these organizations,” he said.

Moscow has always said that those two jihadist groups are the principal targets of its air campaign. Western countries say Russia has in fact been mostly attacking other insurgent groups. Nusra fighters often operate in areas where other rebel groups are also active.

Turkey’s foreign minister said on Friday Russia was targeting schools and hospitals in Syria.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Moscow must halt strikes on insurgents other than Islamic State for any peace deal to work.

“Russia has mainly targeted opposition groups and not ISIL (Islamic State). Air strikes of Russian planes against different opposition groups in Syria have actually undermined the efforts to reach a negotiated, peaceful solution,” he said.

Britain and France said a peace deal could only be reached if Moscow stops bombing insurgents other than Islamic State.

The complex, multi-sided civil war in Syria has drawn in most regional and global powers, producing the world’s worst humanitarian emergency and attracting jihadist recruits from around the world.

The United States has been leading its own air campaign against Islamic State fighters since 2014, when that group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, swept through much of eastern Syria and northern Iraq, declaring a caliphate.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Friday he expected Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to send commandos to help recapture Islamic State’s eastern Syrian stronghold, Raqqa.

Assad said he believed Saudi Arabia and Turkey were planning to invade his country. Russia has said Saudi ground troops would make the war last forever.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister said the main objective in Syria was still to remove Assad, and “we will achieve it”.

The main battlefields in the civil war are in the west of the country, far from Islamic State’s strongholds, where Washington has largely steered clear, leaving the field to Russia which began its air campaign on Sept. 30 last year.

Kerry had entered the Munich talks pushing for a rapid halt to fighting, with Western officials saying Moscow was holding out for a delay.

The tactic of agreeing to a break in hostilities while battling for gains on the ground is one Moscow’s allies used in eastern Ukraine only a year ago. A ceasefire there eventually took hold, but only after Russian-backed separatists overran a besieged town after the deal was reached.

HIGH HOPES

Diplomats from countries backing the plan met on Friday to discuss sending in urgent humanitarian aid.

“I sense now that all of the ISSG (International Syria Support Group) members want to get aid to the besieged areas and also the hard-to-reach areas,” said Jan Egeland, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who chaired the meeting in Geneva.

“Convoys can go very soon if and when we have the permission and the green light from the parties.”

The group, which includes Russia and Iran, had given “excellent feedback” and would meet again on Wednesday, Egeland told reporters after the 3 hour meeting.

The sides in Munich called for a resumption of political peace talks, which collapsed last week in Geneva before they began after the opposition demanded a halt to bombardment.

Syria’s main opposition alliance cautiously welcomed the plan, but said it would not agree to join political talks unless the agreement proved effective.

World powers all say they support a “political transition”, but there has been disagreement for years over whether that requires Assad to leave power, as Western countries have been demanding in vain since 2011.

A senior French diplomat said it would be Moscow’s fault if it kept bombing and the peace process failed: “The Russians said they will continue bombing the terrorists. They are taking a political risk because they are accepting a negotiation in which they are committing to a cessation of hostilities.

“If in a week there is no change because of their bombing, then they will bear the responsibility.”

(Additional reporting by Denis Dyomkin, Shadia Nasralla, and Robin Emmott in Munich, and Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; writing by Peter Graff and Anna Willard; editing by Andrew Roche)

U.S. tells allies campaign to defeat Islamic State must be accelerated

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The United States pressed allies on Thursday to contribute more to a U.S.-led military campaign against Islamic State that it says must be accelerated, regardless of the fate of diplomatic efforts to end Syria’s civil war.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter started talks on Thursday in Brussels with more than two dozen defense ministers, including from key ally Saudi Arabia, which renewed its offer potentially to send troops into Syria.

Carter’s push came a day after France delivered a rebuke to President Barack Obama, demanding that Washington show a clearer commitment to resolving the crisis in Syria where Russia is tipping the military balance in favor of President al-Bashar Assad.

The talks take place as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry leads a diplomatic push in Munich to rescue imperiled peace efforts, which are being held despite Russian bombing raids to bolster Syrian forces around the city of Aleppo.

Carter sought to draw a line between military and diplomatic efforts. “Our focus here is going to be on counter-ISIL and that campaign will go on because ISIL must be defeated, will be defeated, whatever happens with the Syrian civil war,” Carter told reporters, using an acronym for Islamic State.

“But it certainly would help to de-fuel extremism if the Syrian civil war came to an end.”

The United States hopes the face-to-face gathering of coalition defense ministers will allow it to secure more support for a military campaign that aims to recapture the Islamic State strongholds of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.

WARPLANES, TRAINING, SURVEILLANCE

Carter plans to offer a long list of required military capabilities — which, beyond air power, include training Iraqi forces and help with intelligence and surveillance. Carter said countries that cannot contribute militarily can help in other ways, like by choking Islamic State financing.

“We’ll all look back after victory and remember who participated in the fight,” Carter said, addressing the coalition defense ministers, adding the campaign would move more swiftly “if all of the nations in this room do even more”.

He also predicted “tangible gains” on the ground in the coming weeks, vague terminology that could mean anything from territorial advances to strikes against militant leaders or infrastructure.

Saudi Arabia’s Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, a military spokesman, said his country was ready to send troops into Syria if there was a consensus in the coalition. But he declined to elaborate, saying: “It is too early to talk about such options.”

“Today we are talking at the strategic level,” Asseri told reporters in Brussels.

Carter and U.S. defense officials also sought to manage expectations about the talks, since many ministers will not be able to make new commitments without first winning support from their parliaments. The timeline for the campaign to retake Raqqa and Mosul is also unclear.

The head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency cautioned this week that Iraqi forces were unlikely to recapture Mosul this year, despite hopes by Baghdad.

Carter only said securing Raqqa and Mosul needed to happen “as soon as possible”. He also acknowledged the need to grapple with Islamic State’s spread beyond Syria and Iraq, particularly in Libya.

WASHINGTON FACES SCEPTICISM

Even if there is consensus on the military plan to fight Islamic State on Thursday, it is unlikely to diminish scepticism about broader U.S. policy in Syria, which has sought to limit America’s role in the civil war.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Wednesday questioned the commitment of the United States to resolving the Syrian war. Rebel groups say that while Washington has put pressure on them to attend peace talks, they see less help on the battlefield.

NATO ally Turkey has meanwhile, upbraided the United States for supporting Syrian Kurdish PYD rebels, saying Washington’s inability to understand the group’s true nature had turned the region into a “sea of blood”.

Eager to sidestep such friction, NATO allies have focused on grappling with the humanitarian fallout from Syria’s conflict at talks over the past two days.

NATO announced on Thursday it will seek to help slow refugee flows through the Aegean Sea with a maritime mission to target criminal people smuggling networks.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Robin Emmott, additional reporting by Sabine Seibold, editing by Peter Millership)

Gloom at Syria talks as Russia backs government advance

MUNICH (Reuters) – Major powers began a new round of Syria talks on Thursday focusing on calls for a ceasefire and access for aid, but the mood was dour with Moscow showing no sign of calling off its bombing in support of a massive new government advance.

With the Syrian opposition saying it cannot accept a truce because it does not trust the Russians, diplomats saw little chance of progress.

The first peace talks in two years collapsed last week before they began in the face of the government offensive, one of the biggest and most consequential of the five-year war.

Thursday’s meeting in the German city of Munich was meant to allow powers to coordinate support for ongoing negotiations, but instead has turned into a desperate bid to ressurrect them.

A Western diplomat told Reuters that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry wanted an immediate ceasefire in Syria – “All or nothing”. Moscow, however, had proposed a truce that would begin only from the start of next month, giving its Damascus allies 18 more days to recapture Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city.

Western powers were hopeful wording could be agreed that at the very least would allow more access for aid to besieged areas.

“Here we need something of a breakthrough,” said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. “Today, we will try what has not been achieved so far especially, to get better supplies to people locked in Syria and link this to first steps in a significant reduction of violence.”

But a senior Western diplomat summed up the pessimistic outlook: “This meeting risks being endless and I fear the results will be extremely small.”

Russia’s intervention on the battlefield on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad since last October has swung the momentum. The latest advance over the past two weeks has seen government forces and allies rout rebels and come close to encircling Aleppo, a divided city half held by rebels for years.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who met Kerry ahead of the talks, said Moscow had submitted proposals for a ceasefire and was awaiting a response from other powers. But Western officials do not expect Moscow to accept the immediate halt to bombing Washington seeks.

Kerry said he expected a “serious conversation”.

“Obviously, at some point in time, we want to make progress on the issues of humanitarian access and ceasefire,” Kerry said.

Russia is widely viewed as unlikely to halt support for the government advance until Damascus achieves its two main objectives: recapturing Aleppo and sealing the Turkish border, for years the lifeline for rebel-held areas.

That would amount to the most decisive victory of the war so far, and probably put an end to rebel hopes of removing Assad by force, their goal throughout five years of fighting that has killed 250,000 people and driven 11 million from their homes.

“The goal is to totally liberate Aleppo and then to seal the northern border with Turkey,” said Ivan Konovalov, director of the Center for Strategic Trend Studies in Moscow, explaining the Russian government thinking. “The offensive should not be stopped – that would be tantamount to defeat.”

“RISKS BEING ENDLESS”

Washington is leading its own air campaign against Islamic State militants in eastern Syria and northern Iraq, but has resisted calls to intervene in the main battlefields of Syria’s civil war in the west of the country, where the government is mostly fighting against other insurgent groups.

That has left the field to the Russians, who support Assad against an array of rebel groups backed by Turkey, Arab states and the West.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter drew a distinction between the two main zones of the conflict, saying Islamic State would have to be defeated “whatever happens with the Syrian civil war”.

In further evidence of the complexity of a multi-sided civil war that has drawn in regional and global powers, Russia provided air support for Kurdish fighters who overran a military air base that had been in the hands of Syrian rebels since 2013.

The Syrian Kurds have worked with the United States against Islamic State, but are opposed by Turkey, Washington’s NATO ally. The Kurds now appear to be taking advantage of the government advance to expand territory by capturing the Menagh base near the Turkish border.

One rebel commander, Zekeriya Karsli from the Levant Front, said: “The fall of Menagh airport has made the situation on the ground pretty grim.”

Saudi Arabia, which backs some of the rebels that Moscow is helping to defeat, has floated the idea of sending ground troops to help the U.S. effort against Islamic State. This was criticised by Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who said it could make the war permanent.

“All sides must be compelled to sit at the negotiating table instead of unleashing a new world war,” he told Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper.

RUSSIANS AS MEDIATORS

Syria’s national reconciliation minister, Ali Haidar, suggested Moscow was playing a bigger role on the ground than just offering air strikes and military aid: Russian mediators were helping the government broker local deals with rebels willing to lay down weapons or relocate.

“The truth is that since the presence of the Russians on Syrian land, they can play the role of mediator in some areas,” Haidar told Reuters at his offices in Damascus.

The Russian-backed government assault has sent tens of thousands of people fleeing towards the Turkish border. The United Nations has said it fears for 300,000 people still trapped in Aleppo.

In a speech, President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey’s patience may run out and Ankara may have to take action, but gave no details of what he meant. Erdogan called on the United Nations to prevent “ethnic cleansing”, saying as many as 600,000 more refugees could arrive.

The refugee crisis has had far-reaching impact across Europe, where Syrian refugees were the bulk of the biggest wave of migrants since World War Two to reach the European Union.

The NATO alliance announced a new sea mission to help Turkey and Greece crack down on criminal networks smuggling refugees from Turkey into Europe, after thousands drowned and hundreds of thousands made the journey last year.

Turkey has already taken in 2.6 million Syrians, the largest refugee population on earth, and has agreed to help keep them from travelling into Europe in return for aid. Erdogan warned that Turkey could “open the gates” for refugees into Europe if it did not receive enough help.

The United Nations and the European Union, which has agreed a 3-billion-euro fund to improve conditions for refugees in Turkey, have both urged Ankara to admit those fleeing the latest fighting.

“They struck Aleppo so we fled. First we escaped to another village. We’ve gone to every village. But they’re bombing everywhere so we came here,” said Musa Ibrahim Isa, one of the tens of thousands of people at Bab al-Salama, on the Syrian side of the border.

“Our only wish from God is that these gates be opened.”

(Additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla and Denis Dyomkin; Writing by Giles Elgood and Peter Graff; Editing by Peter Millership and Andrew Heavens)

Russia raises specter of permanent or ‘world war’ if Syria talks fail

MUNICH (Reuters) – Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev raised the specter of a permanent or a world war if powers failed to negotiate an end to the conflict in Syria and warned against any ground operations by U.S. and Arab forces.

Medvedev, speaking to Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper on the eve of a security conference in Munich, said the United States and Russia must exert pressure on all sides in the conflict to secure a ceasefire.

Asked about Saudi Arabia’s offer last week to supply ground troops if a U.S.-led operation were mounted against Islamic State, he said:

“This is bad as a ground offensive usually turns the war into a permanent one. Just look at what happened in Afghanistan and many other countries. I don’t need to remind you what happened in poor Libya.”

“The Americans and our Arab partners must think well: do they want a permanent war?” It would be impossible to win such a war quickly, he said according to a German translation of his words, “especially in the Arab world, where everybody is fighting against everybody”.

“All sides must be compelled to sit at the negotiating table instead of unleashing a new world war.”

Russia is carrying out bombing sorties around the key city of Aleppo, in support of advances by troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. U.S. and other Western air forces are also involved in air strikes in northern Syria.

THE “PRIZE” OF ALEPPO

Capturing Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city before the war but now divided between rebel- and government-held sectors, would represent a major military victory for Assad and a symbolic prize for Russia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that Moscow had submitted proposals for implementing a ceasefire in Syria and was waiting for a reaction from international powers.

Lavrov was speaking ahead of a meeting in Munich with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss Syria.

Members of the United Nations Security Council pressed Russia on Wednesday to stop bombing Aleppo in support of the Syrian military offensive and allow humanitarian access ahead of a meeting of major powers in Germany on the conflict.

“You have no one power that can act alone,” Medvedev said. “You have Assad and his troops on one side and some grouping, which is fighting against the government on the other side. It is all very complicated. It could last years or even decades. What’s the point of this?”

(Reporting by John Irish, reporting by Joseph Nasr; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Turkey president chastises U.S. over support for Syrian Kurds

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan upbraided the United States for its support of Syrian Kurdish rebels on Wednesday, saying Washington’s inability to grasp their true nature had turned the region into a “sea of blood”.

Turkey should respond by implementing its own solution, he said, alluding to the creation of a safe zone in northern Syria – something Ankara has long wanted but a proposal that has failed to resonate with the United States and other NATO allies.

His comments, a day after Turkey summoned the U.S. ambassador over its support for Syrian Kurds, displayed Ankara’s growing frustration with Washington, which backs Syrian Kurdish rebels against Islamic State militants in Syria’s civil war.

Compounding tensions, the army said that one Turkish soldier had been killed and another wounded when security forces clashed with Kurdish militants crossing over from Syria.

Ankara regards the Syrian Kurdish PYD group as terrorists, citing their links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade-old insurgency for autonomy in the mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey.

“Are you on our side or the side of the terrorist PYD and PKK organization?” Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara to provincial officials, addressing the United States.

He added that a U.S. failure to understand the essence of the PYD and PKK had caused a “sea of blood” and created a domestic security issue for Turkey.

“On the Syrian problem, which has become a part of our own domestic security, the time has come to implement our proposals for a solution, which everyone finds to be rational and right,” Erdogan said.

Turkey has repeatedly called for a “safe zone” or “no-fly zone” inside Syria. While some Western allies have voiced support in principle, the idea has gained no traction abroad because of concerns that it could bring the West into direct confrontation with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

Ankara summoned the U.S. ambassador to drive home its displeasure after State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Monday the United States did not regard the PYD as a terrorist organization.

Another attempt at Syria peace talks last month quickly succumbed to mounting advances against rebels by Assad’s forces backed by Russian air strikes, amid international disunity over how to end the war with global and regional powers supporting opposing sides.

REFUGEE INFLUX

As well as battling both a Kurdish insurgency and Islamic State, which has carried out several deadly bombings in Turkey, Ankara has been grappling with an influx of more than 2.5 million refugees since the 2011 start of Syria’s conflict.

Erdogan said that Turkish spending on food, accommodation and medical care for 280,000 Syrian refugees living in camps had reached $10 billion, while the United Nations had provided just $455 million.

On Tuesday evening, Turkish soldiers spotted seven PKK militants entering Sirnak province’s Cizre district from Syria and, during an ensuing clash, one soldier was killed and one wounded, the armed forces said in a statement.

The area of Syria near where the battle occurred is controlled by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).

In a separate incident, a police officer was killed and another wounded when PKK rebels fired rockets at an armored vehicle in the town of Sirnak, state-run Anadolu Agency reported. It was not clear when that attack occurred.

Military sources said the army also seized up to 33 pounds of explosives and four suicide-bomber vests when it detained 34 people trying to cross into Turkey from a swathe of Syria under Islamic State control.

Turkey fears that advances by Syrian Kurds against Islamic State close to its 560-mile border with Syria will fuel separatist ambitions among its own Kurds.

A ceasefire between the PKK and the government collapsed in July following what the government said were attacks on security forces, plunging southeast Turkey into its worst violence since the 1990s and scuppering peace talks.

The PYD and PKK share not only ideology but fighters, with the PKK drawing Syrian Kurdish fighters to its camps in northern Iraq and Turkish Kurds serving in PYD ranks.

(Additional reporting by Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Ayla Jean Yackley and Asli Kandemir in Istanbul; Writing by David Dolan and Daren Butler; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Russia, pressed to end Syria bombing, proposes March truce

UNITED NATIONS/DAMASCUS/ONCUPINAR, Turkey (Reuters) – World powers pressed Russia on Wednesday to stop bombing around Aleppo in support of a Syrian government offensive to recapture the city and a Western official said Moscow had presented a proposal envisaging a truce in three weeks’ time.

Secretary of State John Kerry is pushing for a ceasefire and more aid access to Aleppo, where rebel-held areas are being cut off and the United Nations has warned a new humanitarian disaster could be on the way.

Aid workers said on Wednesday the water supply to Aleppo, still home to two million people, was no longer functioning.

Kerry is hoping for agreement at a meeting in Munich on Thursday between Russia, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other powers, aimed at trying to revive peace negotiations that foundered earlier this month.

Syrian officials have indicated no plans to ease up the war effort. A Syrian military source said on Wednesday the battle for Aleppo, a major prize in a war which has killed a quarter of a million people, would continue in “all directions”.

Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said the government expected a tough but relatively short battle to return the city to state control. “I do not expect the battle of Aleppo to go on long,” he told Reuters in Damascus.

A Western official said Russia had made a proposal to begin a ceasefire in Syria on March 1, but that Washington has concerns about parts of it and no agreement had been reached.

In Washington, a state department envoy told Congress the United States needs to consider options in case the diplomatic push does not succeed.

Asked how soon a ceasefire could be put in place, a Russian diplomat who declined to be identified said: “Maybe March, I think so.”

At a closed-door meeting of the 15-member U.N. Security Council on Wednesday, several members pressed Russia to end the Aleppo bombing sooner.

“The (Syrian) regime and its allies cannot pretend they are extending a hand to the opposition while with their other hand they are trying to destroy them,” French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters.

“CROSSED THE LINE”

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Russian air strikes were being undertaken in a “transparent manner” and some Security Council members had “crossed the line” by politically exploiting humanitarian issues.

“They rather crudely use humanitarian matters in order to play, we believe, a destructive role as far as the political process is concerned,” said Churkin, adding that given the heightened interest in humanitarian issues, the council should also start regularly discussing Yemen and Libya.

One U.N. diplomatic source said Russia was “stringing Kerry along” in order to provide diplomatic cover for Moscow’s real goal – to help President Bashar al-Assad win on the battlefield instead of compromising at the negotiating table.

“It’s clear to everyone now that Russia really doesn’t want a negotiated solution but for Assad to win,” said the diplomatic source, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Kremlin rejects claims that it has abandoned diplomacy in pursuit of a military solution, saying it would continue to providing military aid to Assad to fight “terrorist groups” and accusing Syria’s opposition of walking away from the talks.

FOOD, WATER SHORTAGES

Doctors working on both sides of the Syria-Turkey border say they have been overwhelmed by injuries caused by the air strikes, which Moscow says have only targeted Islamist militants but which Western countries say have caused widespread civilian casualties.

“We are increasingly seeing what we call multiple-trauma injuries because of the bombs and the heavy weapons they are using. There are large burn cases, lots of amputations, and internal traumas,” Mahmoud Mustafa, director of the Independent Doctors Association, told Reuters in Gaziantep, Turkey.

French charity Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF), which runs six hospitals in Syria and provides support for another 153 health facilities across the country, said medical workers in the area north of Aleppo had been forced to flee for their lives.

“Yet again we are seeing healthcare under siege,” said Muskilda Zancada, MSF head of mission, Syria.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was delivering water to Aleppo because the city’s system was no longer working but that some supply routes for aid had been cut.

“The temperatures are extremely low and, without an adequate supply of food, water and shelter, displaced people are trying to survive in very precarious conditions,” the head of the ICRC in Syria, Marianne Gasser, said in a statement from Aleppo.

The latest fighting around Aleppo has killed about 500 people on all sides, a monitoring group said.

Medecins Sans Frontiers spokesman Sam Taylor said that while its own hospitals in Syria had not been hit, many others had.

“From the reports we get from MSF-supported facilities, the majority of hospitals are damaged or destroyed by aerial attacks,” he said. “In last two to three weeks we have definitely seen a trend of facilities being hit in the south and in the north.”

FABIUS QUESTIONS U.S. COMMITMENT

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman plans to visit Moscow in mid-March, Russia’s RIA news agency said, a meeting that would bring together the main sponsors of the opposing sides.

Saudi-backed rebels said they would go to Thursday’s meeting in Munich but would only go to U.N. peace talks in Geneva later this month if Russia stopped bombarding their positions and humanitarian aid reached civilians in the areas they control.

Opposition coordinator Riad Hijab said the Russian and Iranian intervention in Syria was bolstering the extremist threat in the Middle East, but the rebels would not give up.

On the ground, rebels say they are fighting for survival.

A commander of a Turkmen contingent within the Levant Front rebel group, Zekeria Karsli, said his men faced attacks on three fronts: Islamic State to the east, Syrian government forces to the south and Kurds to the west.

“Unfortunately the military situation on the battlefield is pretty bad. Russian planes are hitting us from the air and the Iranian/Assad block is hitting us from the ground,” he told Reuters near the Oncupinar border post.

He said Russian warplanes were carrying out hundreds of sorties every day and that the north of Aleppo city was encircled. But he said routes in to rebel-held parts of the city from Idlib province to the west were still open.

Opposition spokesman Salim al-Muslat said U.S. President Barack Obama could stop the Russian attacks. “If he is willing to save our children it is really the time now to say ‘no’ to these strikes in Syria.”

The rebels want anti-aircraft weapons so they can bring down the Russian planes that have been bombing intensely over the past four months.

But their Western and Arab backers have refused, fearing Islamic State militants could seize and use them against their own planes conducting air strikes against the jihadists, who have exploited the war to seize large parts of Syria and Iraq.

United Nations Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura has set a target date of Feb. 25 to reconvene talks between the Syrian government and opposition in Geneva.

But the offensive by Syrian forces, Hezbollah and Shiite militias directed by Iran – all backed by Russian bombing raids – have reversed opposition gains on the ground and encircled rebels inside Aleppo, a strategic prize now divided between government and opposition control.

“It’ll be easy to get a ceasefire soon because the opposition will all be dead,” a Western diplomat told Reuters. “That’s a very effective ceasefire.”

(Additional reporting by Warren Strobel in Munich, John Irish in Paris, Louis Charbonneau in New York, Parisa Hafezi in Ankara, Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Jonathan Landay in Washington and Michelle Nichols in New York; writing by Philippa Fletcher; editing by Dominic Evans)