BEIRUT — Turkey said Tuesday it is pressing for ground operations in Syria, hoping for the involvement of the U.S. and other allies as a force dominated by Kurdish fighters pushed through rebel lines and captured more territory near the Turkish border.
In Damascus, the U.N. envoy to Syria suggested that humanitarian aid would be allowed into several besieged areas today, calling it the “duty of the government of Syria.”
“Tomorrow we test this,” Staffan de Mistura said after meeting with Syria’s foreign minister. The U.N. later announced the government of President Bashar Assad has approved access to seven such areas across the country and that convoys would head out in the coming days.
De Mistura has been trying to secure aid deliveries to improve the chances of restarting peace talks before the end of February. But those efforts have been clouded by the intense fighting north of Aleppo, where various forces backed by regional and international rivals are clashing over a crucial strip of land linking Syria’s largest city to the border with Turkey.
Syrian government troops and allied militias, backed by heavy Russian bombardment, are closing in on the area, hoping to seal off parts of Aleppo held by rebels since 2012 in what would be a major blow to the opposition. Syria’s state news agency SANA and opposition activists said government forces have seized two more villages.
U.S.-backed Kurdish forces, which had mainly battled the Islamic State group and remained largely neutral in the civil war, are advancing in the same region, fighting rebels and other insurgents opposed to Assad in a bid to expand a nearby enclave.
A Turkish official told reporters in Istanbul that his country is pushing for ground operations in Syria, hoping for the involvement of the U.S. and other allies against Islamic State.
“Without ground operations, it is impossible to stop the fighting in Syria,” the official said, adding that Turkey has pressed the issue in recent discussions with the U.S. and other Western nations.
But he ruled out the possibility of Turkey undertaking unilateral action or the prospect of a joint Saudi-Turkish venture without broader consensus in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State.
Russia, meanwhile, denied accusations it carried out airstrikes on a Syrian hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders that killed at least 11 people Monday.
