Turkish Officials Claim Paris Attack Suspect Entered Syria on January 8

Turkish officials said on Monday that one of the suspected gunmen behind attacks in Paris was in Turkey five days before the killings and crossed into Syria last week, Reuters reports. The comment has brought new attention to Turkey’s border crossing with Syria as a transit point for foreign fighters.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the suspected female accomplice, Hayat Boumeddiene, had crossed into Syria on January 8, the same day her partner Amedy Coulibaly is suspected of killing a policewoman in Paris and a day after the mass shooting at the magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Turkish officials insisted that they were not to blame for allowing Boumeddiene to enter and then leave Turkey without being detained, saying that European intelligence agencies hadn’t shared her name with Turkish authorities.

Syria’s government, which has repeatedly accused Turkey of enabling passage of foreign fighters into Syria through its border, responded by saying that Cavusoglu’s comments were “a clear formal confession that Turkey is still the main crossing for foreign terrorists into Syria,” Reuters reports.

Turkey has come under pressure by Western officials to do more to prevent foreign fighters from crossing its 900-km-long border with Syria, who often join the Islamic State and other jihadist groups.

According to a recent article by the Daily Telegraph, “hundreds of al-Qaida recruits are being kept in safe houses in southern Turkey, before being smuggled over the border to wage ‘jihad’ in Syria.”

U.S.-Led Coalition Airstrikes May Have Killed 50 Civilians

“A U.S.-led coalition airstrike killed at least 50 Syrian civilians late last month when it targeted a headquarters of Islamic State extremists in northern Syria,” a McClatchy report claims.

The strike on the evening of Dec. 28 leveled a makeshift jail in the town of al-Bab where civilians were being held, according to an eyewitness cited by McClatchy.

The U.S. Central Command confirmed the attack on Saturday. “Coalition aircraft did strike and destroy an ISIL headquarters building in Al Bab on Dec. 28,” Col. Patrick S. Ryder said in an email to McClatchy.

At least 40 civilians were killed in airstrikes in the months between the start of the U.S.-led coalition strikes in Syria in September through the strike on al-Bab in December, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights.

The U.S. Central Command, which is overseeing the air campaign, for the first time last week acknowledged that they are investigating several incidents in which civilians may have been killed in coalition strikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

“The deaths are seen by U.S.-allied moderate rebel commanders as one reason support for their movement has eroded in northern Syria while support for radical forces such as al-Qaida’s Nusra Front and the Islamic State has gained,” writes McClatchy.

Recommended Reads:

• Guardian: Bashar al-Assad Dared to Spend Night in Refugee Camp by Syrian Actor
• Brookings: The Threat of Terrorism From Western Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq
• Huffington Post: The Syria I Miss

Photo Courtesy of AP Images