Russia sends hundreds of military police to Syria for border patrols

Deployment is part of deal reached with Turkey to jointly monitor safe zone in north-east Syria

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About 300 Russian military police have arrived in Syria to patrol the flashpoint Syrian-Turkish frontier, Russia's defence ministry said on Friday.

The military police, who arrived from the Russian region of Chechnya, will work to ensure the safety of the population and help Kurdish forces withdraw to a line 30 kilometres from the border, the ministry said.

More than 20 armoured vehicles were also sent to Syria to help carry out the patrols.

The deployment follows an agreement between Russia and Turkey this week that will see Russian military police and Syrian border guards "facilitate the removal" of Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) from within 30 kilometres of the border.

The Turkey-Russia agreement was reached after talks between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Tuesday.

Russian military police conducted the first patrols on Wednesday.

The deal follows the decision by US President Donald Trump to pull US troops who were allied with Kurdish forces that bore the brunt of the fight against ISIS in Syria.

But on Thursday the US said it would beef up its military presence to protect north-eastern Syria oil fields as Kurdish forces abandoned several positions.

Turkey says it wants to push the Kurdish forces that it considers terrorists away from its border and create a safe zone where it can relocate some of the roughly 3.6 million Syrian refugees that it is hosting.

But rights groups on Friday accused the Turkish authorities of forcing the refugees to return.

Amnesty International said it spoke with refugees who said Turkish police had beaten or threatened them into signing documents stating that they were asking to return to Syria.

"In reality, Turkey was forcing them back to a war zone and putting their lives in grave danger," Amnesty said in a report, adding that people were "being tricked or forced into returning".

Human Rights Watch (HRW) also issued its own report on Friday alleging that "dozens of Syrians and possibly many more" were arbitrarily detained and deported to northern Syria between January and September 2019, despite active conflict there.

Amnesty estimated that the number of refugees affected over the past few months was likely to be in the hundreds.