President Trump has warned the Syrian regime and its allies against killing "thousands" of innocent civilians in the Idlib province
President Donald Trump on Thursday warned the Syrian regime and its allies against killing "thousands" of innocent civilians in the Idlib province.
"Don't do it!" he wrote in a typo-riddled tweet, accusing Russia and Iran along with the Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad of "killing, or on their way to killing" the civilians.
He later corrected misspellings in a subsequent tweet.
Trump said Turkey was working to stop the "carnage," which has forced at least 100,000 people from their homes in the northwestern province.
Dozens of people have been killed by a wave of bombardment in the area, according to the White Helmets, a local volunteer search and rescue group.
Assad's army, with support from Russian air power, has stepped up its attacks on Idlib, the country's last major opposition bastion and home to more than 3 million Syrians.
The government has said that it is targeting terrorists in Idlib. But if the violence continues, hundreds of thousands of civilians could be displaced in the coming weeks, international aid organizations warn.
Turkey, an ally of Russia's which Trump praised in his tweet as attempting to curb the offensive, has so far not been able to end the violence.
Instead, the country's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who Trump has fostered close ties with, has said his country would be unable to accommodate additional refugees fleeing the misery.
Speaking at a press conference in Istanbul on Sunday, Erdogan said his country, which already shelters the most Syrian refugees in the world, cannot handle a fresh wave of migrants and "will not bear" the burden alone.
It's unclear what prompted Trump's tweet on Thursday. He sent the message from his Florida estate amid a flurry of other angry messages about the ongoing impeachment saga. One included a complaint about his hampered ability to conduct foreign relations.
"Despite all of the great success that our Country has had over the last 3 years, it makes it much more difficult to deal with foreign leaders (and others) when I am having to constantly defend myself against the Do Nothing Democrats & their bogus Impeachment Scam," he wrote. "Bad for USA!"
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