MOSCOW: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says the airstrike that the United States launched at a Syrian military base earlier this month damages the prospects of a political settlement for the war-torn country.

The airstrike was in response to a chemical weapons attack on April 4 on a northern Syrian town that Washington blamed on the Syrian government.

Lavrov told a security conference Wednesday the attack as a pretext for a regime change in Syria and said the U.S. response "pushes the prospect for a wide international front on terror even further away."

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said earlier Wednesday Russia had to boost security measures at its air base in Syria after the airstrike. Russia has provided an air cover for the government's offensive on ISIS militants.

ANKARA: Turkish warplanes struck suspected Kurdish rebel positions in Iraq and Syria Tuesday, drawing condemnation from Baghdad and criticism from the U.S.-led coalition fighting Daesh (ISIS), which is allied with Kurdish factions in both countries. Syrian activists said the attack killed at least 18 members of the Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which is a close U.S. ally against Daesh but is seen by Ankara as a terrorist group because of its ties to Turkey’s Kurdish rebels.

The airstrikes also killed five members of the Iraqi Kurdish militia known as the peshmerga, which is also battling the militant group with help from the U.S.-led coalition.

The YPG said the strikes hit a media center, a local radio station, a communication headquarters and some military posts, killing an undetermined number of fighters in the town of Karachok, in Syria’s northeastern Hassakeh province.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes killed 18 YPG fighters.

The YPG is among the most effective ground forces battling Daesh, but Turkey says it is an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and that PKK fighters are finding sanctuaries in neighboring Iraq and Syria.

A Turkish military statement said the predawn strikes hit targets on Sinjar Mountain in northern Iraq and a mountainous region in Syria. It said the operations were conducted to prevent infiltration of Kurdish rebels, weapons, ammunition and explosives from those areas into Turkey.

The military said in a later statement that the airstrikes hit shelters, ammunition depots and key control centers, adding that some 40 militants in Sinjar and some 30 others in northern Syria were “neutralized.”

In a statement emailed to the Associated Press, the U.S.-led coalition said Iraq’s neighbors need to respect Iraqi sovereignty.

“We encourage all forces to ... concentrate their efforts on ISIS and not toward objectives that may cause the coalition to divert energy and resources away from the defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria,” it said.

Iraq’s Foreign Ministry denounced the strikes as a “violation” of its sovereignty and called on the international community to put an end to such “interference” by Turkey.

“Any operation that is carried out by the Turkish government without any coordination with the Iraqi government is totally rejected,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmad Jamal told the Associated Press.

He cautioned against a broader Turkish military operation, saying it would “complicate the issue and destabilize northern Iraq.”

Although Turkey regularly carries out airstrikes against PKK targets in northern Iraq, this was the first time it has struck the Sinjar region. Turkey has long claimed that the area was becoming a hotbed for PKK rebels. Sinjar Mayor Mahma Khalil said the strikes started at around 2:30 a.m., killing five members of the peshmerga and wounding nine. Khalil said he was not aware of any casualties among PKK rebels.

The peshmerga command called on the PKK to withdraw from the Sinjar region, saying the “PKK must stop destabilizing and escalating tensions in the area.” The PKK has led an insurgency in southeast Turkey since 1984, and is considered a terror organization by Turkey and its allies.

Last year, Turkey sent troops into Syria to back Syrian opposition fighters in the battle against Daesh and curb the expansion of the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces.

The Syrian Kurdish forces denounced Tuesday’s strikes on their positions as “treacherous,” accusing Turkey of undermining the anti-terrorism fight. The Syrian Kurds have driven Daesh from large parts of Syria and are currently closing in on Raqqa, the militant group’s de facto capital.

“By this attack, Turkey is trying to undermine Raqqa operation, give [Daesh] time to reorganize and put in danger lives of thousands of” displaced, the YPG said on its Twitter account.

In Damascus, meanwhile, officials denounced new U.S. sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on 271 people linked to the Syrian agency said to be responsible for producing nonconventional weapons. The move was part of an ongoing U.S. crackdown in response to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons. Khaled Abboud, a member of Parliament, said the center is “purely a research center, mostly for agricultural studies.”

The U.S. has blamed Assad for a chemical weapons attack earlier this month that killed more than 80 civilians in the rebel-held northern Idlib province. Syrian officials strongly deny the charges.

Airstrikes in Idlib Tuesday killed at least 12 people, including civilians, and severely damaged a hospital, the Observatory said. It said it suspected a Russian jet was behind the strike. The attacks came as Syria’s air force and Russian jets intensified their bombardment of Idlib, the activist group reported.

Idlib is an insurgent stronghold, one of the few large areas still under rebel control in the west of the country. Rebels and their families who have chosen to leave areas under government siege around Damascus in evacuation deals have headed for Idlib.