The soldier's death, announced late Monday, raises to 55 the number of Turkish losses this month in direct clashes between Turkish troops and Russian-backed Syrian forces. The death toll includes 33 Turkish soldiers killed Thursday in a single airstrike.

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The Syrian government's months-long offensive into northwest Syria's Idlib province, the last rebel-held area in the country, has sparked one of the war's worst humanitarian crises. Almost one million Syrian civilians have fled north toward the sealed Turkish border.

Turkey has sent thousands of troops into Idlib to support the opposition fighters holed up there, but hasn't been able to roll back the government's advance.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he hopes to broker a cease-fire in Syria later this week when he meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

Tensions in Idlib rose following the Syrian strike that killed the 33 Turkish soldiers in Idlib. Turkey responded with drone attacks and shelling that killed more than 90 Syrian troops and allied gunmen. The Turkish air force also shot down two Syrian warplanes after Syria's air defenses shot down one of its drones. The Syrian pilots ejected safely.

On Tuesday, Turkey shot down a third Syrian fighter jet in Syria's Idlib province.

The Turkish Defense Ministry announced on Twitter that the Turkish military downed a L-39 warplane belonging to Syrian government forces. Syrian state-run television reported that Turkish forces targeted a warplane as it was carrying out operations against "terrorist groups" in the rebel-held Idlib region. It was not immediately clear what happened to the plane's crew.

Outraged by the assault against its forces in Syria, Turkey has opened its western borders for thousands of migrants and refugees wanting to cross into Europe. It is Ankara's latest bid to pressure the European Union to help handle the fallout from the disastrous Syrian war.

Thousands of migrants have since tried to cross into Greece by land and sea. Greek authorities have made clear their side of the border is shut and have turned to arresting dozens of those who managed to find a way through the frontier.

Earlier Monday, a child died when a boat full of migrants heading to a Greek island capsized.

Greek authorities said they had stopped more than 24,000 attempted illegal crossings at the land border with Turkey since early Saturday, and arrested 183 people – very few of whom were Syrians.

As European countries rushed to back Greece, Erdogan said Monday that Western leaders were calling him and urging him to reverse the border opening. "It's done, the gates are open now. You will have your share of this burden now," he said he told them.

Soon "the number of people going to the border will be expressed in millions," he said.

Greece, which has made clear its borders will remain closed, says it is faced with an organized Turkish campaign to push people through. The two uneasy NATO allies are historic regional rivals who have come close to war three times in the past half-century, and even before the migration crisis relations were tense over undersea exploitation rights.

Greek Development Minister Adonis Georgiadis said Greece faced "an organized invasion from a foreign country."

"Turkey is making use of innocent people in its efforts to destabilize Greece and Europe," he told state ERT TV.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it is "understandable" that Erdogan feels overwhelmed by the number of refugees at the Syrian border, and that Russia needs to be pressed on a cease-fire.

"I understand that the Turkish government and President Erdogan expect more from Europe," Merkel said. But it is "fully unacceptable that that is now being put on the backs of refugees.

Greek authorities said they arrested 42 migrants who made it into Greece on Monday, most of them from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Morocco.

Therose Ngonda, a 40-year-old from Cameroon, made it into Greece by wading across the river.

Speaking in the morning, her feet still wet, she said she had been told migrants had 72 hours from Friday to leave Turkey. She got on one of dozens of buses and minibuses ferrying people from Istanbul to the border, among about 2,000 people, including Syrians and families with young children.

Ngonda said she was put into the river on the Turkish side of the border. "They told me 'go that way.'"

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The new push by Russian-backed Syrian troops could worsen the humanitarian crisis that has displaced nearly a million people and left more than 300 civilians dead since the beginning of December.

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The Syrian Response Coordination Group, a relief group operating in the country's northwest, said that government forces had struck numerous civilian targets in the past 24 hours, including eight schools, three medical centers, and several settlements where people displaced by the fighting had taken shelter.

The group's statement condemned the "silence by the international community" calling it an "open invitation" for Russian-backed government forces to continue their assault.

The violence came as a Russian delegation was scheduled to arrive in Turkey later Wednesday to resume talks aimed at easing tensions in the northwestern Idlib region. The area is the country's last rebel-controlled stronghold and the Syrian government's military campaign there, backed by Russia, has created a humanitarian catastrophe with more than 900,000 people displaced from their homes in nearly three months.

Turkey and Russia back rival groups in the Syrian conflict and over the past weeks Ankara sent thousands of Turkish troops to Idlib. Clashes between Turkish and Syrian troops so far this month have left 16 Turkish soldiers dead.

Syrian opposition activists said government forces shelled a Turkish military convoy on a road near the northwestern village of Bara on Wednesday. There was no immediate word on casualties.

On Tuesday, Syrian troops shot down a Turkish drone over Idlib, saying it was carrying out a reconnaissance mission over a town recently captured by government forces.

A Syrian army statement said government forces captured, in addition to dozens of villages, some strategic hills deep inside the heavily fortified areas once held by insurgents. It said the villages captured include former strongholds such as Kafranbel, Has, Kfar Sajneh and al-Dar al-Kabira.

The announcement came a day after shelling and airstrikes in Idlib province left at least 16 civilians dead, including students and teachers in a school in the provincial capital, also called Idlib.

An airstrike on the rebel-held village of Arnabeh on Wednesday morning killed three people, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitoring group, and Idlib-based activist Hadi Abdullah.

A doctor in Idlib said in a video released late Tuesday that the medical conditions are deteriorating in Idlib.

"The medical situation is getting worse and worse," said the doctor who identified himself as Ihsan Eidi. The video was released by a charity organization known as Islamic Relief Worldwide. The doctor said more than 50 hospitals and health centers have gone out of service over the past nine months as conditions worsened.

"We had little equipment and most of it was damaged by the bombs, unfortunately," the doctor said. He added that with the flow of displaced people in the cold weather, tent settlements have become overcrowded, which makes disease spread more easily.

Also Wednesday, a car bombing wounded a Palestinian official near the capital Damascus, according to the Observatory and the pro-government Sham FM radio station. The name of the wounded official in the Damascus suburb of Qatana has not been made public.

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Hundreds of thousands of civilians in Idlib province are scrambling to escape a widening, multi-front offensive by Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces.

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"What matters is today around 1 million people from Idlib have been moving towards our border," Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a statement Saturday after a phone call with US President Donald Trump in which they discussed Syria and other topics. "We are already hosting 3.5-4 million people. Unfortunately, we are not in a position of accepting another 1 million."

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said after meeting his German counterpart on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference that 2 million people could head for Turkey's border with Syria if no cease-fire is achieved.

He said a Turkish delegation was due to visit Moscow on Monday to talk discuss the situation in Idlib, much of which remains in rebel hands. The meeting follows previous visits by a Russian delegation to Ankara. Russia supports Assad, while Turkey backs the opposition.

"There are already people coming to our border and, with Germany's support, we are going to build temporary shelters but these are temporary solutions," Cavusoglu said. "We need a cease-fire."

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said he pushed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who was also in Munich, for Russia to lean on Assad's government to stop the fighting.

"We are very worried that this is going become a humanitarian catastrophe if the fighting there doesn't stop," he said.

Cavusoglu said later Saturday he held a positive meeting with Lavrov.

The Russian foreign minister told the Munich conference after that meeting that parts of Idlib remain "one of the last hotbeds of terrorism, at least the only one on the west bank of the Euphrates."

Lavrov said that agreements between Moscow and Ankara "imply both a cease-fire and a demilitarized zone, but most importantly drawing a line between the normal opposition and terrorists."

"These agreements do not mean the hard fighting against the terrorist threat will stop," he said.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said at a news conference that Russia is the key to stopping the crisis since it provides the Syrian government with aerial support.

"Russia offers various excuses," he said.

Roth acknowledged the presence of thousands of jihadists in Idlib but said "that does not justify the indiscriminate bombardment of the civilian population."

"What is needed now as a matter of humanitarian concern for the people of Idlib and as a matter of basic avoidance of another refugee crisis, is firm pressure on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to stop," he said. He urged Europe to exert that pressure.

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Backed by Russian airpower, Syrian government forces had made a significant advance into the rebel-held northwest this week, seizing the town of Maarat al-Numan, part of an offensive to secure the main highway between Damascus and Aleppo.

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The suicide attacks were carried out by jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and targeted the Jamiyat al Zahraa area on the western edge of Aleppo. A third car bomb was set off by remote control, a source with the group said.

A news outlet linked to the group, Ebaa, published a video which it said showed Tahrir al-Sham fighters pledging "allegiance to death and jihad" before the attack on Jamiyat al-Zahraa, watched by the group's leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.

The northwestern corner of Syria including Idlib province and adjoining areas of Aleppo is the last major rebel foothold in Syria, where Assad has taken back most of the ground once held by his enemies with Russian and Iranian support.

Syrian state news agency SANA said army troops had destroyed four car bombs before they reached their targets. Syrian army forces were firing rockets and artillery at militant groups on the Jamiyat al-Zahraa front, it said. Militants had also fired rockets at residential districts of Aleppo.

The two sides gave conflicting accounts of the outcome of the attack.

A news outlet run by Lebanon's Hezbollah, which fights in support of Assad, said the Syrian army had thwarted a "fierce attack" by the Nusra Front, as Jolani's group was known until it broke ties with al-Qaida in 2016.

But the jihadist-linked Ebaa news outlet said the attacking forces had captured a group of houses on a hill overlooking Aleppo.

The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham source said the attacks had targeted the "Iranian occupation militias," a reference to Iran-backed groups fighting in support of Assad.

Aleppo city has been under full government control since 2016, when pro-Damascus forces defeated rebels in the east of the city.

Some 50 km (35 miles) northeast of Aleppo, Turkish-backed rebels attacked government-held positions near the city of al-Bab, a rebel source and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. Turkish forces were not taking part, rebels said.

The government's latest offensive has triggered a fresh wave of civilian displacement, with hundreds of thousands moving towards the Turkish border.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Turkey may launch a military operation in Idlib unless the fighting there is halted.

The US special envoy for Syria said on Thursday the Idlib fighting raised the spectre of an international crisis.

Turkey, which already hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees, fears a fresh wave of migrants. It has 12 military observation posts around Idlib, set up under an agreement with Russia and Iran, and several of them have since been surrounded by advancing government forces.

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Khan Sheikoun, which holds a strategic position in Syria's northwestern Idlib province, fell to Assad's forces last month following weeks of a massive offensive by Syrian troops backed by Russian military support.

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On Wednesday, a group of foreign reporters on a trip to Syria organized by the Russian Defense Ministry saw municipal workers clearing the streets of debris, and Russian troops distributing aid.

The town, which had a population of 65,000 when Syria's civil war erupted in 2011, now has only about 4,000 residents.

"People are afraid to come back, we still need to inspire public confidence," said Mohammed Sadoun, the acting mayor. "People are paralyzed by fear."

Idlib, which lies on the border with Turkey, is the last major rebel stronghold in the country's eight-year civil war, and Syrian troops have been on the offensive since April 30 to take control of the area.

The onslaught has provoked frictions between Russia and Turkey, which struck a de-escalation agreement for Idlib a year ago. Turkey protested the offensive, describing it as a violation of the deal and urged Russia to rein in Assad.

But Russia, which together with Iran has helped Assad's government regain control over most of the country, has insisted the offensive in Idlib was necessary to uproot militants who used the area as a base to launch attacks on Syrian government troops and Russia's military base.

Sadoun said authorities are working to reopen seven local schools, even though the front lines remain close by. Water and electricity supplies are still missing, and Russian troops distribute food and other items to the population.

"It's like before the war," 45-year-old Khalia Umran said after receiving her aid package. "We can eat and sleep quietly. Under rebel control, life was like hell. They killed my brother and abducted my daughter, but the suffering is now over."

Anas Pserini, a father of seven who returned to Khan Sheikhoun after it was captured by government forces, was also grateful for the Russian aid. "I want to have a job, but it will only be possible after peace is restored," he said.

At the nearby Suran checkpoint, Syrian authorities on Wednesday greeted a group of about 100 people, mostly women, and children, crossing into the government-controlled territory from the rebel-held areas.

"Life is horrible there, I saw dead bodies every day," said 80-year old Amina Nahas. "I want my family to live a peaceful life."

On April 3, 2017, an attack on Khan Sheikhoun left residents gasping for breath and convulsing in the streets and overcrowded hospitals. Nearly 90 people were killed. The United States, Britain, and France accused the Syrian government of using nerve agents in the attack and days later, the US fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat Air Base in central Syria, saying the attack on Khan Sheikhoun was launched from the base.

Assad's government and Russia rejected the charges, alleging the chemical attack was staged by the rebels to provoke the US strike.

On Wednesday, Ravil Muginov, a Russian army general, charged that the rebels in Idlib were trying to prevent civilians from leaving the areas they control.

In Latamna, near Khan Sheikhoun, reporters were shown an elaborate network of caves that served as a major rebel base.

The caves are spacious enough to accommodate vehicles and could provide shelter to up to 5,000 rebels.

"It's a real underground town created by professionals that allowed the rebels to hide from airstrikes," said Syrian army Col. Ali Rami.

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The jets that flew overnight at high altitudes struck a village near Kafr Takharim and an area near the town of Darkush, both in rural areas in western Idlib province, two opposition sources and a resident in the area said.

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The overnight bombing raid came hours after airstrikes hit a part of the northwest for the first time since the truce was declared 11 days ago, according to activists and a monitor. Moscow denied conducting the first strikes.

Russia said the Syrian government unilaterally agreed to a truce on Aug. 31 in opposition-controlled Idlib, where a "de-escalation zone" was brokered two years ago between Russia and Turkey.

Since then, there has been an end to the intense airstrikes by Russian and Syrian warplanes that since late April had accompanied the Russian-backed ground offensive to retake the last rebel bastion.

The Syrian army, aided by Iran-backed militias, also pounded several towns in southern Idlib, including Kafr Sejnah and Hizareen, in what the opposition says has been a persistent pattern of shelling of rebel-held areas despite the truce deal.

"Artillery shelling that has targeted villages of southern Idlib has not stopped since the alleged ceasefire," Mohammad Rashid, spokesman for the Jaysh al-Nasr rebel group said.

The rebel official said jets believed to be Russian also hit for the second time a commanding height known as Kabaneh in the mountainous province of Latakia where rebels have for months withstood intense aerial bombing, after a similar raid on Tuesday.

Russian troops amassing

Rebels say that the Russian-led alliance that brings together elite army units and Iranian-backed militias was using the lull in fighting to reorganize their forces.

A week before the ceasefire, Moscow and its allies captured the strategic town of Khan Sheihkoun in the most significant advance against rebels since the start of the military offensive.

The opposition says new reinforcements from Russian special forces, Iranian-backed militias, and elite Syrian army units were arriving daily and amassing on front lines in southern Idlib.

Several attempts by small crack units of Russian forces and Kremlin-linked private military contractors had been repelled in the last week, rebels say.

"The amassing of Iranian militias and Russian ground troops are all signals that something is being prepared for a new offensive," Major Youssef Hamoud, a spokesman of the Turkey-backed National Army, a coalition of mainstream rebel factions, said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in August that Russian forces were fighting on the ground in Idlib to defeat militant Islamist groups Moscow and its Syrian ally blame for violating the de-escalation arrangement reached with Ankara.

The deployment of Russian special forces and Iranian-backed forces succeeded in breaking months of stalemate on the front lines, where rebels had until then been holding back the army from major advances, Western intelligence sources say.

The capture of Khan Sheikhoun brought Moscow closer to regaining control over two of Syria's most important pre-war highways from Aleppo to Hama and Latakia, on the Mediterranean coast.

"The goals that Russia has set have still not been achieved, which is taking the highways and trying to restore the regime's pre-war commercial arteries," Hamoud said.

The northwest offensive, in which non-governmental organizations and rights groups have accused the Russian-led alliance of using "scorched earth" bombing tactics, has prompted warnings by the United Nations and aid agencies of a new humanitarian crisis.

Hundreds of civilians have been killed while over a half a million people have been uprooted from villages and towns that now lay in ruins and sought shelter at the border with Turkey.

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The US Central Command said the operation targeted leaders of the organization for "attacks responsible for threatening US citizens, our partners, and innocent civilians."

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"The removal of this facility will further degrade their ability to conduct future attacks and destabilize the region," said Lt. Col. Earl Brown, CENTCOM Chief of Media Operations.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had earlier reported a missile attack on a meeting of terrorists in Idlib province that it said killed at least 40 terrorists.

The strike came on the first day of a unilateral ceasefire in Idlib by the Syrian government. The military said it agreed to a ceasefire while reserving the right to respond to any violation.

The Observatory said that it registered no airstrikes since government forces put into effect the ceasefire after midnight on Saturday.

Idlib province is dominated by al-Qaida-linked terrorist factions. It is the last bastion held by the opposition in Syria after President Bashar Assad's forces, backed by Russia, recaptured most other provinces and key cities.

The Idlib ceasefire brings temporary respite after a crushing offensive by Syrian troops in the last remaining rebel stronghold in the country. The offensive began on April 30 and intensified in recent weeks, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee, many of whom were already displaced.

The UN said more than 450 civilians have been killed.

A similar ceasefire at the beginning of the month lasted a few days, after which the government assault resumed and forces captured the Idlib town of Khan Sheikhoun and all rebel-held towns and villages in nearby Hama province.

Also on Saturday, Syria's state-run media said that troops uncovered a mass grave believed to contain the remains of Syrian soldiers killed by "terrorist groups" in the village of Latamneh, in Hama province.

SANA said 10 were retrieved from the grave, adding that they were taken to a nearby hospital to be identified.

Around half a million people have been killed in Syria's long-running civil war.

According to the UN, more than 100,000 people have been detained, abducted or gone missing in Syria. The government is believed to be responsible for the large majority of those disappearances, starting with arrests during its brutal crackdown on anti-government protests that erupted in 2011.

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The fierce fighting killed more than 50 fighters on both sides, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It also underscored that Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces will face a long, hard fight as they try to chip away at the last rebel-held territory.

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The counterattacks began early in the morning and government forces called in Syria's air force to repel them, the Observatory said. It said that 29 Syrian troops and pro-government gunmen were killed, as well as 23 insurgents.

The insurgents captured two villages, Salloumieh and Abu Omar, and pushed into the nearby village of Sham al-Hawa, it said.

The Ibaa media outlet of the al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham terrorist group said its fighters were attacking Syrian positions east of Khan Sheikhoun, a major town that was held by rebels until they lost it last week.

Pro-government activists said on social media that Syrian troops and pro-government gunmen are repelling the attack.

Syrian government forces captured wide areas from insurgents over the past weeks in an offensive that began on April 30. The areas taken include all rebel-held parts of Hama province as well as villages on the southern edge of Idlib, the last remaining rebel stronghold in Syria.

Tuesday's clashes came after Syrian warplanes pounded the rebel-held town of Maaret al-Numan and nearby villages over the past two days – their likely next target for a takeover.

Maaret al-Numan, like Khan Sheikhoun, sits on the highway linking Damascus with the northern city of Aleppo, Syria's largest. Government forces are trying to eventually open that highway.

Taher al-Omar, a citizen journalist with the al-Qaida-linked militants, wrote on social media that they have carried out several suicide attacks so far.

The months of fighting have displaced more than half a million civilians toward northern parts of Idlib, already home to some 3 million people, according to UN humanitarian officials.

Elsewhere in northern Syria, a bomb exploded on a minibus, killing two people and wounding nine near the town of Azaz. The town is controlled by Turkish troops and Turkey-backed opposition fighters, according to pro-government media and the Azaz media center, an activist collective.

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The Syrian state news agency SANA said the warplane had been hit by an anti-aircraft missile fired by militants while on a mission "to destroy headquarters of the Nusra Front," a jihadist group now known as Tahrir al-Sham.

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Tahrir al-Sham, the most powerful insurgent group in the area, said its fighters had shot down a Sukhoi 22 jet that had taken off from a Syrian airbase in Homs province. It did not say how the jet had been brought down.

SANA said the pilot's fate was unknown. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reports on the war using a network of sources, said a pilot who ejected from the plane had been captured by insurgents.

The Observatory said that heavy machine guns had been used to shoot down the jet.

The jet was downed near Khan Sheikhoun, a rebel-held town that was hit by a sarin gas attack in 2017 and is now being targeted in a Russian-backed government offensive.

Government forces seized new ground from rebels near Khan Sheikhoun on Wednesday, advancing to within a few miles of the town. A rebel commander told Reuters that the town, in opposition hands since 2014, was in "great danger".

Dozens of people were killed in Khan Sheikhoun in 2017 in the poison gas attack that prompted US President Donald Trump to order a missile strike against the Syrian airbase from where the United States said it had been launched.

An investigation conducted by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said the Syrian government was responsible for releasing sarin gas on the town on April 4, 2017. Damascus denies using such weapons.

Syrian rebels have shot down government planes on several occasions during the war that spiraled out of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime in 2011.

The northwestern Idlib region is part of the last major stronghold of the opposition to Assad.

Assad's side had struggled to make any gains in the area in an offensive launched in late April. But since the collapse of a brief ceasefire this month, it has managed to take several significant positions, including the town of Al-Habeet on Saturday.

The advance toward Khan Sheikhoun threatens to encircle the last remaining pocket of rebel-held territory in neighboring Hama province, including the towns of Morek, Kafr Zeita and Latamneh.

The humanitarian adviser to the UN Special Envoy for Syria said that the new surge in violence in the northwest threatened the lives of millions after more than 500 civilians were killed since late April.

Tahrir al-Sham is the latest incarnation of the group formerly known as the Nusra Front, which was al-Qaida's official wing in the Syrian conflict until they parted ways in 2016.

The group is designated as a terrorist organization by the UN Security Council.

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Syrian state media said on Thursday the ceasefire would depend on militants fulfilling a Russian-Turkish deal that aimed last year to create an Idlib buffer zone.

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"The agreement to a truce was conditional. This did not happen. We resume our military operations against terrorist organizations," said the army statement.

For three months, an army offensive backed by Russia has killed at least 400 civilians in northwest Syria and uprooted more than 440,000 people, the United Nations says.

Residents and rescuers say that the three-month-old campaign has left dozens of villages and towns in ruins.

Russia and its Syrian army ally deny that their jets indiscriminately hit civilian areas with cluster munitions and incendiary weapons, which residents in opposition areas say are meant to paralyze everyday life.

Since Damascus declared a ceasefire on Thursday night, its warplanes have not mounted airstrikes, though the combatants are still shelling each other.

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