FILE PHOTO: Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu looks on during a meeting with Russia's counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, Russia August 24, 2018. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey will reinforce troop deployments in Idlib after agreeing a demilitarized zone which it will jointly patrol with Russia, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Tuesday.

“Russia and Turkey will carry out joint, coordinated patrols here, around the Idlib border. We will need to make additional troop deployments here,” Cavusoglu told a news conference.

He said the M4 and M5 highways, which run east to west and north to south through the Idlib region, linking the government-held city of Aleppo with Damascus and the Mediterranean coast, would be open to traffic by the end of the year.