Putin, Erdogan look to defuse Syria crisis at Moscow talks

MOSCOW: The leaders of Russia and Turkey met in Moscow on Thursday after a surge in fighting in Syria raised fears of their armies clashing and launched a new migrant crisis. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is hoping Russia’s Vladimir Putin will agree to a rapid ceasefire in Idlib, the northwestern province of Syria where Ankara is battling Moscow-backed government forces. “The entire world has its eyes fixed on us,” Erdogan said at the start of the talks, stressing that decisions were needed to “calm the region and our two countries”.

Putin said the situation in Idlib had become so tense that it was time for “a direct personal conversation” between them. Pointing to the losses suffered by both Turkish and Syrian forces, Putin said: “We need to talk about everything, so that nothing like this happens again and it does not destroy Russian-Turkish relations. Intense fighting has killed dozens of Turkish soldiers in Idlib in recent weeks, as Ankara for the first time launched a direct offensive against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

Russian strikes kill 15 civilians in northwest Syria: Russian air strikes Thursday killed at least 15 civilians including a child in Syria’s last major opposition bastion of Idlib, a Britain-based war monitor said.

The strikes after midnight targeted an area where displaced Syrians had gathered outside the town of Maaret Misrin, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. An AFP correspondent saw the bodies of some of the victims wrapped in thick winter blankets at a local hospital. A rescuer carried in the body of a baby girl, her pink pyjamas caked in dust. At the site of the strikes, two large one-storey buildings lay mostly in rubble near green orchards, and rescuers operated bulldozers to comb through the debris. The strikes destroyed the poultry farm where the displaced families had been living, and dozens of chickens could be seen picking through the dust. The Observatory said the death toll was likely to rise further as many wounded were in critical condition.