DAMASCUS: Israeli air strikes on Syria killed three soldiers and wounded three others on Friday, state media said, after the latest such incident in the war-torn country.
“The aggression led to the death of three soldiers, the wounding of three others,” Syria’s official news agency SANA said, quoting a military source.
Since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes inside the country.
The latest Israeli strikes targeted sites in the countryside around the capital Damascus and south of coastal Tartus province, SANA said, adding that Syria’s air defence systems intercepted some of the missiles.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor also gave the same toll of killed and wounded from the strikes near an air defence base in Tartus province, where Iranian-backed groups are active.
The targeted site in Tartus is located eight kilometres (five miles) from a Russian base, said the monitor, which has a wide network of sources in Syria.
It said ambulances had rushed to the scene of the strikes in Tartus.
In early July Syria’s defence ministry said an Israeli strike conducted from the Mediterranean Sea near the town of Al-Hamadiyah, south of Tartus town, had wounded two civilians.
On Friday, Israeli shelling wounded two civilians in southern Syria near the occupied Golan Heights, according to state media.
Last month, an Israeli strike near Damascus killed three Syrian soldiers, state media said at the time.
After the latest incident Israeli authorities told AFP that they “do not comment on reports in the foreign media.”
Ending the war in Ukraine and starting a new one in Syria are expected to dominate talks on Friday between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan will be riding high from the diplomatic success of helping orchestrate the resumption of Ukrainian grain shipments across the Black Sea when he visits Sochi for his second talks with Putin in just over two weeks.
But there are tensions. The Turkish leader was told by Putin in Tehran last month that Russia remains opposed to any new offensive that Turkey might be planning against Kurdish militants in northern Syria.
Analysts believe these strains form part of the "competitive cooperation" that has defined the two leaders' relation over the past 20 years.
"Russia's war on Ukraine has restored Turkey's self image as a key geopolitical player and given Erdogan more visibility than at any time in the last few years," European Council of Foreign Relations fellow Asli Aydintasbas wrote in a report last week.
"Most Turks support their country's balancing act and quasi-neutral position between the West and Russia."
Attempts by NATO member Turkey to remain neutral in the face of Moscow's historic standoff with the West over Ukraine are starting to pay off.
Months of Turkish efforts saw Moscow and Kyiv sign a UN-backed agreement in Istanbul last month to resume grain deliveries from Ukrainian ports.
The first ship from Ukraine crossed Istanbul on Wednesday. Three more are expected to to set sail Friday under a landmark deal designed to relieve a global food crisis caused by the war.
Turkey wants to translate this success into truce talks in Istanbul between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
"We discussed if the grain agreement could be an occasion for a sustainable ceasefire," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said after talks with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Asia on Wednesday.
Complicating these efforts are repeated threats by Erdogan to launch a new military operation in Syria — a country where Russian and Turkish interests clash.
Russia's army helped Syrian President Bashar al-Assad survive a decade-long rebellion by groups backed by Turkey.
But Erdogan is threatening to invade northern Syria to establish a buffer zone that pushes out Kurdish groups he links to "terrorists" waging an insurgency against the Turkish state.
Putin told Russian media in Tehran he still has "certain disagreements, obviously" with Erdogan about Syria.
"In most likelihood, [Friday's] meeting has something do with a possible incursion into Syria, for which Turkey did not get a green light from Russia — or from Iran, for that matter," said foreign affairs analyst Soli Ozel of Istanbul's Has University.
"Russia would have to get something in return," Ozel added.
Some Turkish media speculate that what Putin really wants is drones.
Turkey has been supplying Kyiv with lethal Bayraktar aerial vehicles that have proved effective in destroying Russian armored columns across the Ukrainian war zone.
U.S. officials say a Russian team has visited Iran to scope out the purchase of hundreds of drones for its own forces in Ukraine.
Erdogan has added to the intrigue by telling his cabinet that Putin asked him in Tehran to start selling the Bayraktars to Russia.
A senior Turkish official later said that Erdogan interpreted the suggestion as a joke.
But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov appeared to lend credence to the idea.
"Military and technological cooperation are always on the two countries' agenda," Peskov told reporters.
One unlikely source of tension is how the two leaders — renowned for being chronically late — will actually meet.
Erdogan made Putin stand in place for nearly 50 seconds before walking out to greet him in Tehran.
A Turkish state news agency camera zeroed in on Putin's fidgeting face the entire time.
Many interpreted this as payback for the time Putin made Erdogan wait for nearly two minutes at a meeting in 2020.
ANKARA
Türkiye’s president on Monday called on the parties who signed a deal last week to unblock Ukraine’s Black Sea grain exports to respect and implement the pact.
"We expect everyone to take ownership of their signatures and act in accordance with their responsibilities," Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a live interview with national broadcaster TRT Haber.
"With this agreement, the effects of the global food crisis, which is reaching serious dimensions, will begin to ease," he added.
On Friday, Türkiye, the UN, Russia, and Ukraine signed a landmark deal to resume grain exports through the Ukrainian ports of Odesa, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny after months of blockage due to the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its sixth month.
Under the deal, a joint coordination center was set up in Istanbul to carry out inspections at the entrances and exits of harbors, and to ensure the safety of the routes.
Addressing Russia's weekend attack on the port of Odesa, Erdogan said it "saddens" Türkiye, adding that "a failure here would work against all of us."
