ANKARA: Turkey’s foreign minister said on Sunday he has told his Russian counterpart that the Damascus regime’s attacks on the last rebel-held bastion in Syria must stop.
Backed by Russian air power, Syrian President Bashar Assad has been intensifying his assault on the holdout northwestern province of Idlib.
And tensions have been running high between Ankara and Moscow after 14 Turks were killed in shelling by Syrian government forces in the region.
“I stressed that the attacks in Idlib must stop and it was necessary to establish a lasting cease-fire that would not be violated,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told journalists in Germany.
Cavusoglu met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday during the Munich Security Conference.
Turkey has 12 observation posts in Idlib as part of a 2018 deal reached between Ankara and Moscow in the Russian resort of Sochi to prevent a regime offensive.
But despite the agreement, Syrian regime forces, backed by Russian air strikes, have pressed ahead with an assault to retake the province, killing hundreds of people.
Four of the Turkish posts are believed to be encircled by Syrian forces, and Ankara has threatened to attack Damascus if they do not retreat by the end of February.
A Turkish delegation will head to Moscow on Monday, after Russian officials visited Ankara last weekend but no concrete agreement emerged.
Rebel supporter Turkey and Damascus ally Russia have worked closely on Syria in recent years despite being on opposing sides of the nine-year conflict.
Turkey tells Russia: Syria regime attacks on Idlib must stop
https://arab.news/mbv7s
Turkey tells Russia: Syria regime attacks on Idlib must stop
- Assad has been intensifying his assault on the holdout northwestern province of Idlib
Israeli police kill Bedouin man during raid in southern Israel, local official says
- The shooting of 36-year-old Muhammed Hussein Tarabin threatened to worsen the already strained relations between the Israeli government and the country’s Bedouin minority
TEL AVIV: Israeli police shot and killed a Bedouin Arab man during an overnight raid in his village in southern Israel, according to media reports and a local official.
The shooting of 36-year-old Muhammed Hussein Tarabin threatened to worsen the already strained relations between the Israeli government and the country’s Bedouin minority.
Israeli police have been conducting a large-scale operation in the village of Tarabin for the past week in what they describe as a crackdown on local crime.
Talal Alkernawi, the mayor of the nearby town of Rahat, confirmed the man’s death.
Israeli police said they opened fire on a man who had “endangered” forces during an arrest raid.
The Israeli news site Haaretz cited relatives as saying Tarabin, whose family name shares the name of the village, was in his home.
In a video statement, Tarabin’s 11-year-old son, Hussein, said that men in uniform came to their house at night. He heard shots and saw his father’s body lying on the ground.
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the police force, expressed support for the police. “Anyone who endangers our police officers and fighters must be neutralized,” he posted on X.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that the country would do everything to prevent the Negev desert in southern Israel from becoming the “wild south”. He congratulated Ben-Gvir on leading the initiative and said he would visit the region in the coming days.
Israel’s more than 200,000 Bedouin are the poorest members of the country’s Arab minority, which also includes Christian and Muslim urban communities. Israel’s Arab population makes up roughly 20 percent of the country’s 10 million people. While they are citizens with the right to vote, they often suffer discrimination and tend to identify with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The Bedouin sector has grappled with crime and poverty, and about one-third of its members live in villages that the Israeli government considers illegal. Israel says it is trying to bring order to a lawless area, but Bedouin leaders accuse the government of neglect, trying to destroy their way of life or pushing to relocate them to less desirable areas.
Residents say police have made around two dozen arrests in the village of Tarabin over the past week. Nati Yefet, a spokesman for the regional council of unrecognized villages in the area, said most have been quickly released.
“They’re looking for people, crime-related things, but they didn’t find anything,” Yefet said. He accused Ben-Gvir of intensifying the raids in the run-up to elections expected later this year.
Marwan Abu Frieh, of the Arab rights group Adalah, said Israel has stepped up house demolitions in recent years, leaving thousands of residents without shelter and worsening the plight of communities often denied basic services.
