Guterres tells Russia and Turkey to De-escalate Idlib Fighting

Antonio Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, has turned to both Moscow and Ankara in a quest to quell violence in northwestern Syria that has included attacks on hospitals and other health facilities. “I am deeply concerned about the escalation of the fighting in Idlib, and the situation is especially dangerous given the involvement of an increased number of actors,” Guterres told reporters on Tuesday at the U.N. Turkey has been backing some rebels in the area while Russia is a backer of the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which has been making an effort to regain more territory lost in over eight years of civil war that has devastated much of the country. The northwestern Idlib Province is still largely in the control of rebels, many of whom are Islamists who have been aligned over the years with al-Qaida. Turkey maintains numerous strongholds in northern Syria, where it sent its troops as a bulwark against Syrian-Kurds fighting Assad. Ankara sees those rebels as allies of the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, which has been fighting an insurgency within Turkey in an effort to secure autonomy.