By — Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin By — National Affairs National Affairs Leave a comment 0comments Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/as-fighting-between-syria-and-turkey-escalates-idlib-faces-mounting-humanitarian-crisis Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Audio In northwest Syria, Idlib province has become home to hundreds of thousands of displaced Syrians, many of whom sought to escape the regime of Bashar al-Assad by fleeing to Turkey. Now those civilians face a worsening humanitarian situation, stranded outside during winter amid an intensifying conflict, as Turkey supports Syrian rebels fighting the Russian-backed Assad regime. Nick Schifrin reports. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. Judy Woodruff: Mounting chaos in Northwestern Syria touched off heavy fighting and urgent diplomacy today, and set a new wave of refugees in motion.Foreign affairs correspondent Nick Schifrin has our report. Nick Schifrin: On the border that separates Turkey from Syria, the two countries' militaries are hammering each other.Turkey launched multiple attacks against Syrian government forces, in retaliation for Syrian airstrikes that killed 33 Turkish soldiers last night. Hulusi Akar (through translator): Over 200 Syrian regime targets were heavily struck by aircraft, unmanned aerial aircraft and land-based resources immediately following this heinous attack. Nick Schifrin: Inside Syria, the Turkish military is siding with Syrian rebels in Idlib against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his ally Russia.Nearby, the Turkish military has deployed to outposts along near the border. Syrian civilians are forced into refugee camps, where children have little to defend against a new adversary, the cold.These displaced families have spent years fleeing the violence and are hoping to escape to Turkey. Mustafa (through translator): If the Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian allies are in charge, then we have no option but to go to Turkey, and, from Turkey, go to Europe. Nick Schifrin: But, in Turkey, Syrian refugees who have spent months or years sheltering are trying to enter Greece, after Turkey hinted at opening its Western border. Some migrants aren't waiting, boarding dinghies to make the perilous journey by sea, stoking memories of 2015, when almost a million refugees risked their lives to cross the Mediterranean and seek asylum in Europe.To try and reduce tensions, today, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Erdogan also spoke with President Trump.And following an emergency meeting, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called on Russia and Syria to stop bombing civilians. Jens Stoltenberg: I call on them to stop their offensive, to respect international law. Nick Schifrin: The U.S. says it supports the Turkish operation, but the U.S. has not yet provided material support to help end the crisis.For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Nick Schifrin. Listen to this Segment Watch Watch the Full Episode PBS NewsHour from Feb 28, 2020 By — Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin is PBS NewsHour’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Correspondent. He leads NewsHour’s daily foreign coverage, including multiple trips to Ukraine since the full-scale invasion, and has created weeklong series for the NewsHour from nearly a dozen countries. The PBS NewsHour series “Inside Putin’s Russia” won a 2017 Peabody Award and the National Press Club’s Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence. In 2020 Schifrin received the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Media Award for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis of Foreign Affairs. He was a member of the NewsHour teams awarded a 2021 Peabody for coverage of COVID-19, and a 2023 duPont Columbia Award for coverage of Afghanistan and Ukraine. Prior to PBS NewsHour, Schifrin was Al Jazeera America's Middle East correspondent. He led the channel’s coverage of the 2014 war in Gaza; reported on the Syrian war from Syria's Turkish, Lebanese and Jordanian borders; and covered the annexation of Crimea. He won an Overseas Press Club award for his Gaza coverage and a National Headliners Award for his Ukraine coverage. From 2008-2012, Schifrin served as the ABC News correspondent in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2011 he was one of the first journalists to arrive in Abbottabad, Pakistan, after Osama bin Laden’s death and delivered one of the year’s biggest exclusives: the first video from inside bin Laden’s compound. His reporting helped ABC News win an Edward R. Murrow award for its bin Laden coverage. Schifrin is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a board member of the Overseas Press Club Foundation. He has a Bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a Master of International Public Policy degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). @nickschifrin By — National Affairs National Affairs