Turkey shoots down warplane as Syrian forces retake town

Turkish forces downed a warplane flown by Syrian government forces over Idlib on Tuesday, as a strategic town in northwest Syria fell under the control of President Bashar al-Assad’s military.
The downing was the third in three days after Turkey hit two other Syrian aircraft on Sunday.
“Turkish regime forces targeted one of our warplanes, which led to its fall in the northwest area of Maarat al-Numan”, Syrian state media reported. Turkey’s defense ministry also said that “an L-39 plane belonging to the [Syrian] regime has been downed”.
Assad’s forces took over the key city of Saraqeb, which lies at the junction of the M4 and M5 highways. “Regime forces began to advance into the city at 2am and an hour later entered the neighbourhoods and began combing them. The shelling from Russian warplanes escalated and forced us to withdraw west of the city”, said a field commander in Saraqeb belonging to one of the rebel groups.
As a response to the killing of 34 Turkish soldiers in Idlib last week, on Sunday Turkey said it was pursuing a military operation called “Operation Spring Shield”, which is its fourth and biggest intervention yet into Syria’s nine-year civil war.
The UK-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that, since the airstrike that killed the 34 soldiers, Turkish bombardment, mostly drone strikes, has killed 119 regime soldiers and 20 allied fighters.
“Turkey is not joking. The Idlib issue is directly related to the survival and protection of a homeland. Russia and Syria should not try Turkey’s patience any more”, warned Devlet Bahceli, the head of Turkey’s far-right Nationalist Movement Party.