Skip to main content

UN chief terms Turkish troops’ killing one of ‘most alarming moments’ of Syria war

un chief turkish troops

UN chief Antonio Guterres on Friday described an increase in fighting in northwest Syria that killed dozens of Turkish troops as “one of the most alarming moments” of the nine-year-old war and – along with most UN Security Council members – called for a ceasefire.

The 15-member Security Council met on Friday after 33 Turkish soldiers were killed in Idlib, one of the deadliest attack suffered by Turkey’s army in nearly 30 years.

“We call for the Russian Federation to immediately ground its warplanes and we call for all Syrian forces and their Russian backers to withdraw to the ceasefire lines first established in 2018,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Craft, told the council.

Turkey and Russia gave opposing accounts to the Security Council of what happened.

Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said Turkish troops shared coordinates with Russia, which were then given to Syrian government forces, to avoid conflict on the ground. He said Russian warplanes were not providing support in the area where the Turkish soldiers were killed.

Turkish U.N. Ambassador Feridun Sinirlioglu disputed Nebenzia’s account, saying that “radar tracks” showed that Syrian government and Russian aircraft were flying in formation during the time of the attack.

“We had prior coordination in writing with Russian forces about the location of our convey and air strikes continued despite our immediate warnings right after the very first attack,” he said.

Craft urged Guterres to do everything in his power to broker a ceasefire, saying “the U.N. must play a central active role if we are to avoid even greater escalation.”

Ahead of the Security Council meeting, Guterres called for an immediate ceasefire “before the situation gets entirely out of control,” adding that: “Civilians are paying the gravest price … And the noose keeps tightening, as the frontlines reach more densely populated areas.”

The post UN chief terms Turkish troops’ killing one of ‘most alarming moments’ of Syria war appeared first on ARY NEWS.



from ARY NEWS https://ift.tt/2waQJip
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trump says he urged team to ‘slow’ COVID-19 testing

US President Donald Trump said Saturday he was encouraging health officials in his administration to slow down coronavirus testing, arguing that increased tests lead to more cases being discovered. The president has claimed falsely on several occasions that surges of COVID-19 in several states can be explained by greater numbers of diagnostic tests. At his first rally since the outbreak forced nationwide shutdowns in March, Trump told the crowd in Tulsa, Oklahoma that testing was a “double-edged sword.” The United States — which has more deaths and cases than any other country — has carried out more than 25 million coronavirus tests, placing it outside the top 20 countries in the world, per capita. “Here is the bad part: When you do testing to that extent, you are going to find more people, you will find more cases,” Trump argued. “So I said to my people ‘slow the testing down.’ They test and they test.” It was not clear from Trump’s tone if he was playing to the crowd, who ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sir Anwer Pervez, richest Pakistani British businessman, loses £432m in pandemic

Sir Anwar Pervez OBE, the founder and chairman of Bestway Cash & Carry has lost £432 million during the coronavirus pandemic to bring him down to No 50 on the richest British people list. The list has 1,000 people and is published by the Sunday Times newspaper . Pervez was at No 42 previously.  The 2020 list of the UK’s richest shows its first fall in wealth in a decade as Britain’s wealthiest people lost tens of billions of pounds in the coronavirus pandemic, the Sunday Times reported in its Rich List 2020. The newspaper, which has produced the respected annual ranking of the country’s 1,000 wealthiest people since 1989, found the past two months had resulted in the super-rich losing £54 billion ($65 billion). More than half of the billionaires in Britain had seen drops in their worth by as much as £6b, a decrease in their collective wealth unprecedented since 2009 and the financial crisis. The Hinduja brothers, who topped last year’s list with a £22b fortune, saw among ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Despite reservations about jury, Pakistan to implement FATF reforms: envoy

WASHINGTON: Despite its reservations about the fairness of the jury which is to determine Pakistan’s performance against terror financing, the government is committed to implementing its action plan for dealing with this issue, says Islamabad’s Washington envoy Asad Majeed Khan. In a conversation with a prominent US scholar George Perkovich, recorded at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington on Monday afternoon, Ambassador Khan said the actions that Pakistan had taken so far to eliminate terror financing were “reflective of the political will”. “We feel that we have done a lot. We are also clear and determined to do more,” said the envoy while responding to a question about a meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) held in Orlando last week, which asked Pakistan to implement its own action plan for eliminating terror financing by October. Failing to do so could put Pakistan on a blacklist of violators and bring strict economic sanctions too. “But we w...
Post a Comment
Read more