Oct 30, 2019

Joint Turkish-Russian patrols will start in Syria on Friday, Turkey's president has said, after the Kremlin said Syrian Kurdish fighters had withdrawn under a deal between Ankara and Moscow.

"We will start the joint work on the ground on Friday, namely we are starting the joint patrols," President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told parliament on Wednesday in a televised speech.

Under an agreement hammered out in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi last week after Turkey's cross-border offensive into Syria, Kurdish forces were given a 150-hour deadline to withdraw from a band of territory along the border.

Under the Sochi deal, Turkish and Russian joint patrols were meant to begin after the deadline expired on Tuesday.

Erdogan said Russian authorities had informed Ankara that some 34,000 members of the "terror group" had withdrawn -- together with 3,260 pieces of heavy weaponry -- from a zone running 30 kilometres (18 miles) from the Turkish-Syrian border.