Turkey destroys regime's chemical warfare facility in Syria

Turkey has destroyed a chemical warfare facility in northwest Syria in an overnight attack, said a Turkish official Saturday.

The Turkish army destroyed overnight "a chemical warfare facility, located some 13 kilometers south of Aleppo, along with a large number of other regime targets," the senior official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

Defense Ministry said earlier that Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) also destroyed a Russian-made Pantsir S-1 air defense system, eight tanks, four armored combat vehicles, five howitzers and two barreled rocket launchers deployed by Assad forces and killed 56 regime troops.

Following the regime’s attack on Thursday that killed 33 Turkish soldiers in northwestern Syria’s Idlib, TSK carried out airstrikes and artillery shelling throughout Friday.

Backed by heavy Russian airstrikes, Syrian regime forces have been fighting since the start of the year to recapture the Aleppo countryside and parts of neighboring Idlib, the last opposition stronghold in the country. The advances have sent hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians fleeing toward the border with Turkey in the biggest single displacement of the nine-year war.

In September 2018, Turkey and Russia agreed to turn Idlib into a de-escalation zone, in which acts of aggression are expressly prohibited. But more than 1,300 civilians have been killed in attacks by the regime and Russian forces in the de-escalation zone since then, as the cease-fire continues to be violated.

More than 1 million Syrians have moved near the Turkish border due to the intense attacks.