Turkey and Russia were engaged in a fresh war of words on Wednesday after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened an “imminent” operation in Syria to end the regime’s brutal assault on the last rebel enclave.
It came as Syrian aid workers issued an urgent call for a ceasefire and international help for nearly a million people fleeing the regime onslaught in the country’s northwestern Idlib province — the biggest wave of displaced civilians in the nine-year conflict.
The Syrian NGO Alliance said displaced people are “escaping in search of safety only to die from extreme weather conditions and lack of available resources”.
“We are facing one of the worst protection crises and are dealing with a mass movement of IDPs (internally displaced persons) who have nowhere to go,” it told a press conference in Istanbul.
The group said a total of $336 million was needed for basic food, water, shelter. Education resources were also needed for 280 million displaced school-aged children.
Turkey, which backs some rebel groups in Idlib, has been pushing for a renewed ceasefire in talks with Russia, eager to prevent another flood of refugees into its territory adding to the 3.7 million Syrian refugees it already hosts.
But Erdogan said talks with Moscow over the past fortnight had so far failed to achieve “the desired result” and warned that Turkey would launch an offensive into Syria unless Damascus pulled its forces back by the end of the month.
“An operation in Idlib is imminent… We are counting down, we are making our final warnings,” Erdogan said in a televised speech.
