Air raids hit near a Turkish military post in northwest Syria yesterday, a war monitor said, after Ankara vowed to take necessary steps to protect its troops deployed across the border.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said warplanes fired at areas surrounding a Turkish observation post in Sheir Maghar, located in the jihadist-run Idlib region.

The Britain-based monitor said it was not clear if the aircraft belonged to Russia or the Syrian regime, both of which have pounded Idlib with heavy air strikes since late April. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said that the post itself was not hit.

The raids near Sheir Maghar came after Syrian government forces surrounded another Turkish observation post in the nearby town of Morek last week, according to the Observatory, which relies on sources inside Syria for its information.

Days earlier, a regime air strike cut off a Turkish military convoy shortly after it crossed into Idlib en route to the town of Khan Sheikhun.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday said that the situation in Idlib had put his troops “in danger.”

“We do not want this to continue. All necessary steps will be taken here as needed,” he said after talks with his Russian counterpart Vladmir Putin in Moscow. Idlib province and parts of neighbouring Aleppo and Latakia are controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a jihadist alliance led by Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate.

Russian-backed Syrian government forces launched a ground offensive against the region on the Turkish border on August 8 after months of heavy bombardment.

The fighting has upped the stakes with Ankara, which has established 12 military observation posts in Idlib under a buffer zone agreement reached with regime ally Russia. The Turkish-Russian deal in September last year was supposed to avert any full-blown offensive on Idlib, but it was never fully implemented.