Syrian government urges UN to make Turkey withdraw from Syria

The Syrian government has called on the United Nations to force Turkey to pull "its invasion forces" out of Syria, state media said on Friday.

Turkey's military shelled Syrian government forces and their allies in northern Syria on Thursday, causing deaths and injuries, state-run SANA news agency reported.

Turkey launched its first major military incursion into Syria in August, deploying tanks and air power in support of rebel groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Turkey's operation aims to drive Islamic State from the border and stop Kurdish militias from gaining ground in their wake.

Syria's foreign ministry urged the UN secretary general and security council to "force Turkey to withdraw its invasion forces from Syrian land and stop the attacks", SANA said.

The Syrian government blames Turkey for "killing tens of thousands of its innocent sons and destroying Syrian infrastructure", it added.

Northern Syria has become an increasingly complex battlefield in the multi-sided war, with the Russian-backed Syrian army, Turkish-backed rebels and US-backed militias all waging separate campaigns against Islamic State.

Ankara is particularly concerned about the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia which it considers to be an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has fought a three-decade insurgency inside Turkey.

Ankara has said its intervention is aimed as much against the YPG as IS, and there have been repeated clashes between Turkish forces and the Kurdish militia.

Asked about the standoff at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, the top US commander for the region, General Joseph Votel, acknowledged that tensions between Ankara and the Kurds were near breaking point.

Efforts have been made to address the issue at a military level, "and there has to be an effort at the political level to address this," Votel said.

Some of the US troop reinforcements being sent to Syria are to be deployed to SDF-held areas near the front line to deter further clashes between Turkish forces and Washington's Kurdish-Arab allies.

Relations between Ankara and Moscow, however, are much improved even though they have supported opposite sides in the conflict between the rebels and the regime.

​Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in Moscow on Friday for a new round of consultations with President Vladimir Putin.