Iran holds funeral for troops killed in Syria

Altogether, aid agencies and the Turkish government say 70,000 t0 100,000 people may have been newly displaced and are on the move seeking safety inside northern Syria.

A Turkish official said Saturday that as many as 35,000 Syrians had massed along the closed border.

Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces have been advancing across the north in recent days behind a curtain of heavy Russian airstrikes, and could soon encircle rebel strongholds in Aleppo, once the country’s largest city and commercial hub.

Earlier this week, Syrian troops backed by allied militias and intense Russian air strikes launched an offensive in northern Syria.

SANA and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights say troops captured the village of Rityan on Friday.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has said 15,000 people fleeing Aleppo had arrived at Turkey’s border, but some media reports put that number significantly higher.

Video footage showed thousands of people massing at the Bab al-Salam crossing on the Turkish border.

The talks broke down in large part because of Syrian government offensives, including on the outskirts of Aleppo, once the country’s largest city.

“People are coming to the border and want to cross into Syria with the hope that they can sneak their relatives back into Turkey”, he said. They escaped from Russians.

Sunni tribal fighters in Iraq backed by US airstrikes have advanced against weakening Islamic State defenders in a string of towns but the progress was offset by rebel losses in Syria.

But the civil war has damaged its landmarks, including the 11th century Umayyad Mosque, which had a minaret collapse during fighting in 2012, the 13th century citadel and the medieval marketplace, where fire damaged more than 500 shops in its narrow, vaulted passageways. “They came to the border in hard conditions”. Officials at the governments crisis management agency said Friday it was not clear when Turkey would open the border to allow the group in and start processing them.

Syria’s rebels have long sought anti-aircraft weaponry from worldwide backers, but Washington has held back for fear they would end up in the hands of jihadists such as Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front or even the IS group.

Ankara said it suspected the aim was to starve the population into submission.

Davutoğlu reiterated during the donor conference that the country had so far spent 10 billion dollars on Syrians who have been placed in refugee camps in Turkey.

The battle for Aleppo has escalated since UN-led efforts to begin peace talks in Geneva stalled last Wednesday, with facilitators suspending the process for three weeks.

“The situation in Aleppo is a humanitarian catastrophe”, said an opposition spokesman still in Geneva after the ill-fated peace talks.

But tensions remain, with Moscow accusing key opposition backer Ankara of actively preparing to invade Syria, a claim Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dismissed as “laughable”. Neither side saw much to discuss there: The government believed it was achieving its goals on the battlefield, while the opposition accused the Assad administration and Russian Federation of using negotiations as cover for indiscriminate attacks.