ANKARA: The number of Turkish soldiers killed in an attack in Syria on Saturday has risen from two to three, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said.
Officials said a unit had been attacked as it returned from a patrol, with an reporter at the scene reporting that a bomb blast had killed the soldiers on a road near the city of Idlib.
After initially announcing two soldiers had died and three others were “seriously injured,” the ministry said later on Saturday that one of the wounded soldiers died in hospital in southern Turkey.
Meanwhile on Sunday, an uneasy calm held sway in a southern Syrian city after the regime troops entered a former opposition holdout under a surrender deal, journalists on a government-organized tour said.
Daraa province and its capital of the same name, the cradle of Syria’s uprising, returned to government control in 2018 under a previous ceasefire backed by government ally Russia. But rebels stayed on in a southern part of the city called Daraa Al-Balad, and over the summer they clashed with the regime forces on its outskirts seeking to retake the area.
A new Moscow-brokered truce has seen dozens of opposition fighters bused out of the city over the past few weeks and regime forces return to the area since Wednesday.
Inside Daraa Al-Balad on Sunday, journalists saw bulldozers clearing away rubble between battle-scarred buildings.
Syrian and Russian flags flew in several places. The guns had fallen silent but the areas visited were largely devoid of civilians, and several onlookers on motorbikes refused to speak to the media.
“Nine checkpoints have been set up on the edges of and inside Daraa Al-Balad,” a military source said.
Under the deal, fighters who agree to the truce have been invited to give up their guns and sign up to stay in the city under a so-called reconciliation process.
“The process is ongoing to settle the status of those fighters who wish to do so after handing over their weapon,” the source said.
“There is cautious calm and we are waiting for the reconciliation steps to be completed,” the source added, expressing the hope that everyone would accept the deal.
“The state would prefer not to have to resort to a military solution.”
The United Nations and rights group Amnesty International have warned of dwindling supplies inside Daraa Al-Balad in recent weeks, after regime forces tightened the noose around the area.
