Turkey hits back at 54 regime targets after Syrian shells kill Turkish troops

Turkey said on Feb. 3 its military hit 54 of Syrian regime's targets after eight Turkish military personnel were killed by shelling in Idlib in northwest Syria, where fighting threatens to test ties between Ankara and Moscow.

During a visit to the bordering Hatay province, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said 54 regime targets have been hit and 76 soldiers of the regime forces have been neutralized.

The peace process for Syria which started under the agreements drawn up in Sochi, Russia last year and Astana, still continue, Akar conveyed. He added that the cease-fires were announced within the agreements yet were violated by the regime "every time," thus failing to become lasting.

"In this context, we continue our work and take additional measures to ensure the continuity of the cease-fires, to ensure the security of our troops, and to prevent migration and end the humanitarian drama in which people live in difficult terrain and climate conditions," Akar said.     

Turkish and Syrian troops traded fire in northwest Syria on Feb. 3, with more than 20 reported dead, further raising tension between Ankara and regime ally Moscow over the war-torn Idlib region on Turkey's border.

Russian airstrikes also killed 14 civilians in the same area, a monitoring group said, as the World Health Organization warned dozens of medical facilities had been closed amid a fierce government offensive.

Violence in recent weeks has caused one of the worst waves of displacement in the nine-year-old Syrian conflict.

Feb. 3's tit-for-tat shelling between Turkish and Russian-backed Syrian forces was the deadliest since Turkey deployed troops to Syria in 2016, ratcheting up tensions between the conflict's two main foreign protagonists.

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