Taliban prisoners despite a deal between the group and the u. S. That with the support and 145 days until take your host the olympics the japanese capital holds a scaled down barrier with just 200 runners in an effort to halt the spread of coronavirus. Welcome to the news are turkey says its launched a renewed military operation in northwestern syria it follows the killing of 34 turkish soldiers in Syrian Government strikes in the province on thursday turkeys defense minister says the operation is in selfdefense against the assad Regime Syrian state media says turkey has shot down 2 syrian warplanes and but the pilots are safe. Is our correspondent on the turkey syria border near hotter and lets just begin with this very confusing picture about planes either being shot at or shot down. While this this is because of the series of reports weve been getting over the last few hours about spectacular spike of events now in syria particularly in the province of idlib this is absolutely an indication of why didnt military confrontation take in place a different fronts but its been just explain exactly whats happening so now from according to the Turkish Military of defense earlier today without specifying exactly where. Syrian fighter jets were planning to attack turkish warplanes and then the turkish warplanes how to retaliate shooting down to syrian fighter jets they said that it also destroyed 3 defense batteries in it for evidence this comes only almost 2 hours after the Defense Ministry said that its military operation and you campaign piece schildt is underway and they say that this operation has started the day the night turkish soldiers were killed and they say that it will continue in province and that they are determined to take retaliate or to retaliate actions against the Syrian Government they said also and thats according to the. Defense ministry the door wish to get into any confrontation with the russians but however every action which is going to be taken from out on was is going to be considered as an act of selfdefense this is all the asli an indication of a skill ation in different parts of syria particularly in the northwestern part of course were seeing or hearing more about a syrian offensive in and around data. Exactly so this is exactly what is happening as this is further increasing in done our province the Syrian Government has launched today an offensive to take over the city of Southern Maine a sudden has been a major opposition stronghold that are widely seen by the syrians of the as the birthplace of the 2011 freising however in 2017 when the Syrian Government backed by russia started to gain control they signed we conciliation agreements with the opposition and one of those agreements was about defusing tension in our side i mean that didnt work the government failed to bridge build bridges and win the hearts and minds of the people today they said its about time to take over the city but were getting reports from activists that the fighting still intensified over there but now if you go a little bit further north towards the south of it live thats another spectacular story happening burbles backed by turkey are taken over major territory in in satellite and also in the. Those gays would not have been possible had it not been for the massive turkish support for the Syrian Opposition just a few days ago they lost most of that territory yesterday and today they managed to claim back most of that territory so what you seeing on the ground is clearly and dictation that the political military map in it province is changing a colossal across the hour thanks for the update on the turkey syria border. Well were also following another top story thats of course the thousands of refugees and migrants many of whom have fled the fighting are continuing to gather at greeces one border with turkey the greek Prime Minister called a meeting of the National Security council greeces greeces Security Forces have reportedly prevented 10000 people from entering in the past 24 hours the surge in numbers follows turkeys decision to open its borders to europe Greek Police Say more than 500 refugees and migrants also arrived on the greek islands closest to turkey on sunday natasha going has more on the migrants newsmans farm and then on turkeys border with greece. Migrants are on the move but were seeing an intermittent trickle thats how i would describe it were certainly not seeing thousands of people if you look behind me theres a road and that will lead to the checkpoint with turkey and greece weve seen groups of people maybe in id say 10121012 proceeding since we arrived several hours ago but not hundreds of people and certainly not thousands of people arriving the Turkish Interior Ministry is saying that more than 76000 people have left turkey via the northwest border with greece and volga area since it opted to open its borders on friday the people were speaking to say theyre not convinced of those numbers simply because its been quite difficult for them to proceed any further than beyond the Turkish Border of course there are various entry points the checkpoint is a bit difficult for certain but there are entry points smugglers are involved and people are paying weve heard reports of up to thousands of dollars for them to be taken in various routes that include land the river and the sea. The refugees are continuing to arrive by base on the island of les paul some from the police reports. A single boat load of refugees is escorted to the shores of lesbos high winds have likely prevented many others from crossing but they are forecast to die down and more boats are expected to come all who arrive and up here in moria camp there are 22000 people here 7 times what it was built for and many have to find space among the olive groves most from afghanistan theyve escaped war and death but many say they havent found life here there are no formal schools so 14 year old flood operates his familys stand selling fruit and vegetables is morea good. Not a good. Read. Maybe a small maybe that people here have little to do but wait for their asylum applications to be decided upon and their wait has just become much longer a new asylum law took effect at the beginning of the year that fast tracks new applications so the trajectory applicants can be sent back to turkey as quickly as they arrive but that discriminates against people like these who arrived as a family 5 months ago we had into the smart. 26. And they did it but they dont take it to you they see only take in tales from the people this year and you have until you 10 months next turkey agreed to take back your attorneys in a 2016 statement signed with the European Union and the greek government says it plans to return at least 10000 people this year but whether turkey will all of that agreement in the current Political Climate is an open question so the greek governments entire refugee strategy now hangs in the balance many local people say they have little faith in this new policy. Owns one of the olive groves next to moria. Parish that youre getting a year ago the refugees were chopping limbs of trees to cook with but we can still harvest a few olives this year was a bumper crop but we couldnt pick a single olive my land was burned twice then they pitched a few tens onto the burned patch and soon after the land just filled up with tents. The government is using lesbos as a holding area but many greeks fear that if turkish president or a chapter you threaten flood of refugees becomes a reality the European Union could try and use their country as a buffer zone for the rest of the continent John Psaropoulos aljazeera lesbos. Well you know kind of cool lucky is a researcher on violence and borders at the university of birmingham in england she joins me now via skype good to have you with us on the program we all sort of welcome todays migrants expect from the e. U. Compared to those arrived on europe store 5 years ago. I would say i would say a rather violent welcome because its clear that the year does not a one term and it is clear because we have been saying the past couple of there is what is happening at the greek Turkish Border and the euro has been completely silent about the situation so its will not be welcomed in the your by the e. U. Governments is it more a case of obviously youre saying the e. U. Would find them give them an unwelcome. Arrival but greece itself is not willing to allow them to enter without any sort of Financial Support and thats the problem that greece faces that now its going to be seen as the bad guy of europe stopping migrants with force in some cases if he doesnt help them well even if greece had the Financial Support by the e. U. Will it still unable to handle the situation on its own because its not repair what is happening is something that we have been waiting to happen since then to 16 when they decided to agree with thank you and they dont a statement it was a human disaster waiting to happen it has happened now if it isnt a crystal ball to do anything if thats the case if it seems that there is no european political will to deal with this problem in the turkish president blames the e. U. For failing to keep its financial promises in hosting the migrants that arrived in turkey is it then true assumption to make that the e. U. Renee dont their commitments or theyve just been slow in their commitments and this is why weve reached this point. Well look this is what happens when you are green and a statement that is not legally binding when you agree on a statement with someone who is who clearly has authoritarian tendencies they you have. To deal with the situation by giving giving money without any control. So with that sort of very open relationship is it any wonder that with the european Political Landscape having changed over the last 5 years and move more towards the right but there are some governments across the e. U. Who obviously are very off sticking their heels in and making sure that the migrants themselves know politically they would not be welcome in is this going to cause some sort of fractious in pass within the e. U. Which will over spill on the borders of these countries such as hungary such as the Czech Republic such as bulgaria and greece where the public will pup support a more right wing political leaning well actually all of this countries have quite right wing governments including grace and we have the answer is specifically for greece we have been seeing it quite clearly with the boxes that they have been following since summer. What i expect will happen is that the locals the people of those countries we no longer be able to trust their government in handling the situation and they will think this is jason in their own hands as it happens in the lead but at the moment not only less but ill start in here and say weve seen some of the writers on those issues so you know please do please do finish. In here that was a superrich another super there was a board under stress this morning and from the reports that come from the island there were locals holding. A. Gun to press a they were quite aggressively waiting for the people to gunman shot. Who how do you think this is going to play out to be what you think would be the ideal situation Going Forward for both government such as greece and for migrants who intend or do end up on greek soil. They usually reinstate relocation that did start in the under 17 otherwise there will be no solution they will have to open the borders im very clear about that they will have to provide safe passage and they will have to take responsibility for what is going on and start helping. A human theyre really. Assisting on a humanitarian terms and not on military terms as they are doing now because what the u. S. Clearly doing at the moment is giving money to graze and given land to turkey to deal with this change and that its clearly going to be dealt this way itll be interesting to see what sort of statements come out of brussels a kid i call ok thank you very much for joining us from birmingham in the u. K. Thank you. Ron has reported on the surge in corona virus cases and nearly a dozen more tests its now has the highest number of deaths from the infection outside of Mainland China the government says they are break in serious moments a solution of the brain would have to lose you do seem over the last 24 hours we have had 385. 00 new cases we have now had 978. 00 infections in the country since the outbreak began are at the new 385 cases unfortunately 11 people have lost their lives now the total number of deaths from covert 19 in the country stands at 54 so joins us now in tehran via skype zain lets just talk through these latest figures a real concern for to iran. Thats absolutely right so how yet again another spike in double digits of the number of people that have died from the corona virus here in iran and although it was expected it was expected to get worse the government has been preparing people for that saying it over and over again the fact that the total number of cases has nearly doubled in just a matter of 24 hours is something that still is a very serious concern now this may be as much the evidence of the spread of the disease in this country as it is the fact that there simply are more tests kits available to iranian authorities now than there were at the beginning of this Public Health crisis of this corona Virus Outbreak in this country now the Health Minister spokesman also said that the best Case Scenario is that this disease will begin to abate around march around some time next month towards the end of march but he said that it is far more likely that it will go on for the next 3 or 4 months well into the persian new year so for many iranians who are coping with this now this is really the new normal well into their persian new year well into the middle of this year now a vaccine and many universities and Public Health facilities are trying to were going to vaccine but thats a year away at least and now forward fifths of the country is somehow affected or has experienced some cases of the coronavirus and in some of those kids places where there has been an acute a number of cases there are new travel restrictions in place now perhaps a very morbid Silver Lining one positive of the fact that the number of cases has doubled since the death rate has kept a steady pace that means that the death rate in iran is now around 2 percent which is in the normal range for at this disease for this virus as seen in other countries and of course as coronavirus the issue that of course they the virus itself takes hold and sovereign state. Around the world it does play on the psyche of the public at large and what is life like for those that youre speaking to or have had contact with in terms of the way that theyre dealing with the issue of coronavirus in among society. Yes its it has to be said iranians were already experiencing a number of of public crises before this medical outbreak for the corona Virus Outbreak so you you had a population that was already really struggling to cope with daily life you know least of all from sanctions placed on it by the United States or the economy was already struggling now were seeing the Economic Impact play out on city streets stores shops cafes restaurants all around the city wherever you go you can see signs posted on windows of closed closed businesses saying that they are closed indefinitely due to the coronavirus and those few restaurants that do remain open some businesses have to remain open to be on the tables at all of these restaurants youll find a bottle of Hand Sanitizer sitting right next to ketchup bottles so thats really when i say new normal thats sort of how its playing out in everyones daily lives this is a city of around 10 to 15000000 people 20000000 by some estimates and really the traffic on the streets has almost completely died down you dont see the same level of People Movement that you would on any sort of work sort of normal business day a lot of people who arent out and about you know the streets are empty schools are closed businesses are closed many people are communicating how theyre experiencing this virus on social media you see people posting videos of medics burying those that have died instead of family members to avoid any further risk of contracting the disease hospital workers are trying to keep their spirits up by dancing but they do take it seriously theyre also talking about how short staffed and short handed they are in terms of supplies to deal with this and people are also sharing clips of people collapsing on the street unable to breathe the young and the elderly the most likely to succumb to these problems but it has to be said the coronavirus is also exacerbated by the fact that were seeing more and more pollution that ron is one of the most polluted kind of cities in the world d and that is certainly having an effect on people susceptible d to the disease zain thanks so much for that in terre. Now the u. S. Has tightened travel restrictions for countries most affected by quote a virus after recording its 1st death from the infection President Trump called for calm after confirming a man died in Washington State the u. S. Is banning all travel to iran and blocking entry to any foreign citizens who visited iran in the past 2 weeks is also issued do not travel warnings to parts of italy and south korea trump is considering closing the border with mexico despite the southern neighbor having only 4 confirmed cases additional cases in the Uni