LONDON: Turkiye and Syria on Thursday denied a report that Syrian government officials and representatives of Lebanon’s Hezbollah met secretly in Turkiye last month to ease tensions between the longtime adversaries. The Turkish Communications Directorate said allegations that officials from Syria and Hezbollah met in Turkiye under the auspices of the National Intelligence Organization, known by its Turkish acronym MIT, were “entirely unfounded,” Anadolu Agency reported. The directorate’s Center for Combating Disinformation said claims about the purported meeting’s date, location, participants and substance “do not reflect any reality and are entirely fabricated and speculative.” Syria’s government also rejected the report. “These claims are false, and no such meeting took place,” the Foreign Media Directorate at Syria’s Information Ministry said, according to the state-run Alikhbariah television channel. Reuters, citing six informed sources, reported earlier on Thursday that Syrian officials and representatives of the Iran-backed Lebanese group had met in Turkiye at least once in September in an effort to de-escalate tensions. The sources included two Syrian officials, a US official and a senior Lebanese security source close to Hezbollah, Reuters said. The report described the contact as the first direct meeting between the two sides. Hezbollah and Syria’s current authorities have been adversaries for years. The Lebanese group deployed fighters to Syria during the country’s civil war to support the government of now-deposed President Bashar Assad.