UN sounds warning on Idlib aid, Russian 'war crime'

REYHANLI - Relief operations to meet the needs of nearly 1 million people who fled recent fighting in northwest Syria's Idlib have been overwhelmed, the UN aid chief said on Tuesday. His comments came as the United States and Britain pledged to step up aid efforts, and Turkey remained embroiled in a dispute with European states over a surge in the number of refugees attempting to enter Greece.

Greece called for "strong" support in a meeting with European Union leaders on a deepening migration crisis at its border with Turkey, after Ankara warned it would allow millions of refugees to head to Europe. Ankara's move has been widely interpreted as an attempt to pressure European states into offering greater support for Turkish military operations in Syria.

A Greek government source said Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis expects "strong support" from the European Union in a meeting with the three leaders of the bloc's institutions at the border area on Tuesday.

Syrian regime ally Russia, however, rejected statements by both Western countries and Turkey about refugee flows and a humanitarian crisis in the Idlib region, describing the information as groundless, the Interfax news agency cited the Defence Ministry as saying.

Russia said almost 200,000 refugees were currently near the Syrian-Turkish border because of fighting in Idlib, but said no more than 35,000 people had crossed the border from conflict zones in Syria into Turkey so far in 2020 - rejecting Ankara's claims that there are up to a million Syrians who have fled to the Turkish border regions.

The Kremlin on Tuesday also rejected a claim by UN investigators that Russian airstrikes in Syria amounted to a war crime by indiscriminately targeting civilian areas. The UN Commission of Inquiry on the rights situation in Syria said in its latest report on Monday it had evidence that Russian planes participated in two air strikes in Idlib and in rural Damascus last July and August that killed more than 60 people.

The UN report, which covers the period from July 2019 to January 10 this year, said there was evidence to prove Russian planes took part in both attacks, and that since they were not directed at military objectives they amounted to a "war crime".

"We do not agree with such accusations," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, raising questions about the objectivity of the report.

"It is obvious that no commission could have received reliable information on what is happening on the ground," Peskov said.

He added: "Nothing is said about the attacks by terrorist groups, which makes any judgement issued by this commission one-sided."

The UN's Syria commission, set up in 2011 shortly after the civil war began, has repeatedly accused various sides of war crimes and in some cases crimes against humanity.

The allegations against Moscow came against the backdrop of a sharp rise in tensions between Turkey and the Russian-backed Syrian military, which is fighting to recapture the last bastion of opposition to President Bashar al-Assad in northern Syria.

The escalation has sparked a humanitarian crisis and a political standoff between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Russia's rejections came as a war monitor said that a missile fired by Syrian regime forces at Idlib city on Tuesday killed nine civilians, among them five children. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a surface-to-surface missile crashed into a residential neighbourhood of the rebel-controlled city, currently dominated by the al-Qaeda affiliated militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

'Cruel and brutal'

As government forces fought Turkey-backed rebels in Idlib, US and UN officials visited Turkey's Hatay border province to view efforts to cope with what they say is one of the biggest humanitarian crises of Syria's nine-year civil war.

The United Nations is scaling up assistance after agreeing with Turkish authorities to double the number of trucks it sends across the border to 100 each day, said Mark Lowcock, UN Under-secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs.

"This relief operation has been overwhelmed. There needs to be more of everything. The first thing is money," Lowcock told reporters at a trans-shipment point for UN supplies in Turkey's Reyhanli district.

The number of displaced people has surged to 980,000, more than half of them children, who are now coping with inadequate shelter and a lack of sanitation facilities in areas near the Turkish border, he said.

Lowcock said $1 billion was needed annually to sustain relief operations for a couple of million people in the Idlib region, noting there were not enough tents.

Kelly Craft, US Ambassador to the United Nations who was also inspecting the relief efforts, announced $108 million additional funding for the operations.

"Humanitarian aid is only a response but the solution is an immediate ceasefire," Craft told reporters. "We are asking for other countries to step up and contribute."

The US State Department said Washington "strongly supports" a UN recommendation that additional border crossing points between Syria and Turkey be opened to allow delivery of urgently needed aid and medicine to Syrian civilians fleeing the fighting.

Britain's Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said during a visit to Ankara that his country was giving an additional 89 million pounds ($114 million) in aid to Syria, part of it to Idlib.

Fighting in Idlib has escalated in recent days as Turkey steps up military operations to counter advances by Syrian government forces, backed by Russia, in the last remaining bastion held by rebels in the country's northwest.

"This is not something that just happened. This is planned by the Assad regime," Craft said. "It is cruel and brutal."

Turkey, which has sent thousands of troops and military hardware into Idlib to confront Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces, hosts 3.6 million Syrians and has closed its border saying it cannot take in more migrants.

Ankara said last week it would no longer uphold a 2016 accord with the European Union to keep refugees on its territory in return for aid, leading to thousands of migrants seeking to breach the border into Greece.

More than 380,000 have been killed in the fighting in Syria since a series of street protests against Assad's rule in 2011 disintegrated into a proxy conflict drawing in countries throughout the Middle East.