Turkish prime minister says tens of thousands being pushed towards border as world gathers to raise billions for refugees

Increasingly intensive Russian airstrikes are pushing tens of thousands of Syrians from the city of Aleppo towards the Turkish border, Turkey’s prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu has said, predicting a fresh exodus even as Europe struggles to respond to the existing refugee crisis.

After a week of the most intensive bombardment of the five-year war, opposition forces in northern Syria say they are losing their grip on Aleppo, with forces loyal to the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, in control of most of the countryside immediately to the north. Davutoğlu said up to 70,000 people were fleeing the area, and the city was threatened with a “siege of starvation”.

Speaking at a conference in London on Thursday that raised more than $10bn (£6.85bn) in aid pledges, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, called on the regime and its supporters to halt their bombardment of opposition-held areas, saying they “clearly signalled the intention to seek a military solution rather than enable a political one”.

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Amid the criticism, Moscow hit back, accusing Turkey of preparing for a military incursion into Syria. “The Russian defence ministry registers a growing number of signs of hidden preparation of the Turkish armed forces for active actions on the territory of Syria,” said spokesman Igor Konashenkov, sparking a robust denial from Ankara.

Images of a checkpoint on the border between the Turkish town of Reyhanlı and the town of Sarmada in Syria taken in late October and late January showed a buildup of transportation infrastructure that could be used for moving in troops, ammunition and weapons, he claimed.

But it was the impact of Russian airstrikes that dominated the conference, which began the day after UN-brokered Syrian peace talks were put on hold after just three days amid anger in the Syrian opposition delegation over the sieges of towns and increasing numbers of Russian airstrikes.

The Russian defence ministry said on Thursday it had hit almost 900 targets in Syria in the previous three days. While Moscow’s intervention has the declared aim of battling the Islamic State terror group, military observers claim at least 70% of airstrikes have targeted opposition groups fighting to oust Assad.

Davutoğlu said: “Ten thousand new refugees are waiting in front of the door of Kilis [a border province in southern Turkey] because of air bombardments and attacks against Aleppo.



“Sixty to seventy thousand people in the camps in north Aleppo are moving towards Turkey. My mind is not now in London but on our border – how to relocate these new people coming from Syria?” he said. “Three hundred thousand people living in Aleppo are ready to move towards Turkey.”

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Speaking to the Guardian on the margins of the donor conference, the Turkish prime minister said: “We have lost our hope and faith that we will get anything from the UN … The UN was formed to protect humanitarian values. Once a UN secretary general went to Srebrenica in Bosnia to apologise because the UN failed to stop the massacres in 1995 and I am sure one day another UN secretary general will go to Aleppo and to Madaya [a besieged town in south-western Syria] to apologise to the Syrian people because it has not stopped these massacres.”

The Russian air attacks in the area around Aleppo have succeeded in clearing rebel strongholds that had defied two earlier regime pushes, and allowed loyalist forces led by Lebanese Hezbollah and Shia militias to advance towards a large industrial area at the gateway to the rebel-held east that has been transformed into a wasteland over three years of bombardment.

The fall of the city would be a devastating blow to anti-Assad forces. Opposition groups, among them the al-Qaida aligned Jabhat al-Nusra, which sent large numbers of fighters to the city last week, have controlled Aleppo’s eastern half since summer 2012. Syrian forces, heavily backed by their allies have remained in control of the west.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ahmet Davutoğlu. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

“They have not stopped bombing,” said a rebel leader, who was leaving his position in the town of Hreitan. “All the hospitals have been destroyed. We have around seven attacks an hour every day for a week. There were more than 120 on Tuesday alone.”

Echoing Davutoğlu’s warning, opposition groups said thousands of residents of the Aleppo countryside were headed on foot for the Turkish border, a journey of up to 50 miles. Roads to the south of the adjoining Syrian town of Azaz were attacked by Russian jets earlier this month. “They have done all they can to destroy supply lines,” said one resident. “The world has fast forgotten that we were the ones who kicked out Isis two years ago. We have kept them out of the area since then.”

Speaking at the London conference, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said: “The situation is not sustainable. We cannot go on like this. There is no military solution; only political dialogue will rescue the Syrian people from their intolerable suffering.

“It is deeply disturbing that the initial steps of the talks have been undermined by the continuous lack of sufficient humanitarian access, and by a sudden increase of aerial bombing and military activities within Syria. The focus on the people of Syria is also being lost amid petty procedural matters.

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“All sides in this conflict are committing human rights abuses of a shocking scale and depravity.”

The stepped-up Russian attacks come despite Moscow’s stated commitment to a political process to end the war in Syria, which has been responsible for the greatest humanitarian crisis of modern times and laid large parts of the country to waste.

Responding to the regime advances on Aleppo, Kerry said: “The continued assault by Syrian regime forces – enabled by Russian airstrikes – against opposition-held areas, as well as regime and allied militias’ continued besiegement of hundreds of thousands of civilians, have clearly signalled the intention to seek a military solution rather than enable a political one.

“We call upon the regime and its supporters to halt their bombardment of opposition-held areas, especially in Aleppo, and to lift their besiegement of civilians in accordance with UN security council resolutions.”

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Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, told the conference he hoped for an immediate ceasefire in Syria and the speedy resumption of the suspended Geneva talks. “We maintain that a political resolution through intra-Syrian talks is the only way out. Outside actors should facilitate such dialogue and not seek to influence its parameters or outcome,” he said.

But the Syrian opposition was outraged at Zarif’s presence, given Tehran’s vital role in backing Assad politically and militarily. “Iran is invited to the Syria donor conference in London while it continues to be one of the main forces causing brutal humanitarian suffering of Syrian men, women and children,” said Salem al-Meslet, spokesman for Syrian opposition negotiators.

“If Iran wants to play a constructive role, then it should immediately withdraw the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps] forces from Syria, and ensure the Assad regime lifts its unlawful sieges causing thousands of Syrians to starve to death across the country.”



