Turkey open to contact with Syria

Russia urges two neighbors to talk as tension at border rises

A member of the Syrian civil defense group known as the White Helmets carries a boy injured during Wednesday’s airstrikes in Ghouta in this photo provided by the rescue group.
A member of the Syrian civil defense group known as the White Helmets carries a boy injured during Wednesday’s airstrikes in Ghouta in this photo provided by the rescue group.

ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkey signaled Wednesday that it's ready for communication with Syria as Russia sought to avert a direct clash between the two countries over a Turkish military offensive against a Kurdish enclave.

Turkish intelligence officials "may establish direct or indirect contact when it is required to solve certain problems under extraordinary conditions," President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, said in televised remarks Wednesday. This wouldn't amount to official contacts with the "Syrian regime," Kalin said.

He spoke a day after Syrian pro-government fighters moved to join Kurdish forces in the northwestern border town of Afrin, where they are battling a Turkish incursion. With Syrian flags plastered on their armored vehicles, the forces left Aleppo in what state-run Syrian TV said was an initiative to help "defend our people against the Turkish aggression." More pro-government forces arrived in Afrin on Wednesday, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported.

The deployment raised the specter of military conflict between forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad and Turkey, which is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. While Assad has managed to reassert control over a large part of his country after seven years of war, the Syrian conflict is entering a new phase amid spiraling tensions between outside powers, including Russia, the U.S., Iran and Israel.

U.S. strikes may have killed more than 200 Russian mercenaries attacking American-backed forces in Syria's eastern Deir el-Zour region earlier this month. In February Israel launched its biggest strikes in Syria since the 1982 Lebanon war after one of its warplanes was shot down in the wake of the destruction of an apparent Iranian spy drone over Israeli territory.

The Turkish campaign in Syria aimed at expelling Kurdish fighters from the border area is in its second month. Turkish officials view Kurdish fighters in Syria as an extension of the Kurdish separatists that the government has fought in eastern Turkey for decades. Hundreds of people have been killed in aerial and artillery bombardments, according to officials in Moscow.

Turkey should enter into negotiations with Syria to resolve the issue, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday.

"Turkey is doing what is necessary for its national interests," Kalin said. "Our response to calls that the Afrin offensive should stop is that we don't owe an explanation to anyone."

At least 250 civilians, including 58 children, have been killed by bombardments and airstrikes in the past 48 hours in eastern Ghouta, according to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the Syrian war through activists on the ground. Indiscriminate shelling of Damascus by anti-Assad fighters has killed 112 people, including 17 children, since Nov. 16, according to the observatory.

Doctors in Syria's rebel-controlled suburbs of Damascus said Wednesday that they were unable to keep up with the high number of casualties amid a bombing campaign by government forces that has targeted hospitals, apartment blocks and other civilian sites.

The bombardment has forced many among the nearly 400,000 residents to sleep in basements and makeshift shelters and has overwhelmed rescue workers who have spent days digging out survivors from the wreckage of bombed-out buildings.

Dr. Waleed Awata described a desperate scene at the small hospital where he works as an anesthesiologist in the town of Zamalka near Damascus. The facility, with just 17 beds, received 82 patients Tuesday night, he said.

"We had to give them IVs and treat them on the floor," the 44-year-old physician said. He said the bodies of two women and two children killed in Wednesday's shelling were also taken to the hospital.

The hospital was struck Tuesday by barrel bombs as well as sporadic artillery fire, Awata said. Like many hospitals in the area, patients had been moved into the basement to shield them from airstrikes.

Doctors Without Borders said 13 hospitals and clinics that it supports have been damaged or destroyed over the past three days.

The International Committee of the Red Cross called for immediate access to tend to the wounded.

Accusations of Russian involvement in attacks on eastern Ghouta are "groundless," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday.

Information for this article was contributed by Selcan Hacaoglu, Henry Meyer, Donna Abu-Nasr, Cagan Koc, Ilya Arkhipov, Dana Khraiche of Bloomberg News; and by Philip Issa, Zeina Karam, Vladimir Isachenkov and Bassam Hatoum of The Associated Press.

A Section on 02/22/2018

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