'Many Syrians have returned home since Turkish ops'

<p>By Semra Orkan</p> <p>ANKARA (AA) – More than 318,000 Syrians have returned home since Turkey completed counter-terror operations in northern Syria, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said Thursday.</p> <p>Some “318,500 Syrians have returned home, as there is peace in Syria now,” said Soylu, addressing a crowd in Istanbul.</p> <p>Soylu said Turkey sent doctors, nurses, engineers, security officers and soldiers to Syria and built schools there.</p> <p>He recalled that Turkey neutralized 3,333 terrorists in two years of cross-border and nationwide counter-terrorism operations.</p> <p>Since 2016, Turkey’s Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch operations in northern Syria have liberated the region from YPG/PKK and Daesh terrorists, including Al-Bab, Afrin and Azaz, making it possible for Syrians who fled the violence there to return home.</p> <p>Syria has only just begun to emerge from a devastating conflict that began in 2011 when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on demonstrators with unexpected ferocity.</p> <p>Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed or displaced in the conflict, mainly by regime airstrikes targeting opposition-held areas.</p> *Writing by Sibel Morrow