Turkey shoots down two Syrian warplanes

BEIRUT – Turkey shot down two warplanes and inflicted heavy losses on ground forces in northwestern Syria on Sunday as the two countries edged closer to an all-out war.

The operation came in retaliation for an airstrike blamed on the Syrian government that killed 36 Turkish soldiers Thursday, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said. It followed weeks of Turkish threats to attack Syrian forces if they continued to advance toward the Turkish border, risking a new wave of refugees.

Armed Turkish drones struck military airports and loyalist bases deep in Syrian government-held territory as Turkish troops and allied rebels pushed forward to drive Syrian troops out of towns and villages they had recaptured from opposition forces in recent weeks.

Russia, Syria’s most important ally, refrained from intervening on its behalf for the first time since the Idlib fighting first erupted last year, suggesting an unwillingness by Moscow to allow the spiraling confrontation between Turkey and Syria to jeopardize its relationship with Ankara or to escalate into a wider conflict with an important NATO member.

The situation on the ground was fluid, and the progress of the Turkish-backed offensive was difficult to assess. It appeared the Turkish intervention had succeeded in halting, and in some places reversing, weeks of Syrian government advances into the last enclave of rebel-held territory that have sent nearly a million people fleeing toward Turkey for safety.

The United Nations has called the exodus the largest single displacement and one of the biggest humanitarian catastrophes of the nine-year Syrian war.

An Iranian news outlet reported 21 Iranians had been killed in Turkish attacks, and the Iranian-allied Lebanese militia Hezbollah buried five fighters in Beirut on Sunday, among eight killed in the battles.

Turkey’s Defense Ministry said warplanes had shot down two Syrian Su-54 fighter jets because they posed a threat to Turkey’s forces in the area. The Syrian pilots ejected and parachuted to safety behind government lines, the official Syrian news agency said.

Syria said it had downed three Turkish drones and warned that any aircraft flying over the area would be treated as hostile and shot down. “Turkish hostile acts will not succeed in saving terrorists from the strikes of the Syrian Arab Army,” SANA, the state news agency, quoted an unnamed military official as saying.