Thirty-five soldiers injured in the attack have been evacuated to hospitals in Turkey, Dogan said.
A security meeting is being held at the presidential palace after the "nefarious attack against heroic soldiers in Idlib who were there to ensure our national security," according to a statement from Turkish director of communications Fahrettin Altun.
Turkey has retaliated in an effort to "revenge our martyred heroic soldiers," the statement said.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu spoke to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg following the Syrian attack, according to a statement released by the ministry. There were no further details about the content of the call.
The Syrian government has not commented on the Turkish claim. The Russian Defense Ministry denied that its air force carried out strikes in the area of Idlib where the Turkish soldiers were located. Moscow said Turkish forces were "located near the areas where terrorist groups were situated" and then "came under fire from Syrian forces."
Turkish soldiers are in the last rebel-held area of Syria as part of a 2018 de-escalation agreement between Ankara and Moscow. The Syrian government, backed by Russia, has mounted an aggressive air campaign against rebels in Idlib in recent weeks.
Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the last opposition-held territory in Syria in the last two months, per Unite Nations figures, in the wake of an air campaign and swift ground offensive by the Syrian regime and its Russian backers.
Tens of thousands are still on the move, and nearly 700,000 of the displaced are women and children, the UN said.
A spokesperson for the State Department said the United States is "very concerned."
"We are in contact with Turkish authorities to confirm these developments and to have more clarity on the current situation on the ground," the spokesperson said.
"We stand by our NATO Ally Turkey and continue to call for an immediate end to this despicable offensive by the Assad regime, Russia and Iranian-backed forces."
CNN's Dakin Andone, Mary Ilyushina and Jennifer Hansler contributed to this report.
People mourn next to the body of Muddasir Khan, who was fatally wounded Tuesday in a clash between people demonstrating for and against a new citizenship law, in New Delhi, India, February 27, 2020.
ADNAN ABIDI/REUTERS
Delhi — The death toll from four days of sectarian violence in India's capital has risen to 38, making it the worst religious rioting Delhi has seen in more than three decades. Over 200 people have been injured, dozens of them shot, as mostly-Hindu supporters of a controversial new citizenship law seen as discriminatory against the country's minority Muslim population clash with opponents.
Despite assurances from government and police officials Wednesday that the situation was under control, new clashes were reported early Thursday morning, and the death toll continued to rise sharply. Residents in the hardest-hit neighborhoods have told CBS News they're afraid to leave their homes.
The violence prompted the U.S. Embassy in India to issue an advisory for American citizens in the capital city, urging them to "exercise caution," "keep a low profile" and "avoid all areas with demonstrations."
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In Washington, the U.S. government's Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) condemned the "brutal and unchecked violence" in Delhi and urged the Indian government to "take serious efforts to protect Muslims and others targeted by mob violence."
India's External Affairs Ministry dismissed the commission's comments as "factually inaccurate and misleading," and said they appeared to be "aimed at politicizing the issue."
New law behind the clashes
The controversial law at the heart of the violence is called the Citizenship Amendment Act. Brought in by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, the law makes it easier for people facing religious persecution in three neighboring countries — Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh — to get Indian citizenship. But the law specifically excludes Muslims.
There were widespread, deadly protests as soon as the law was passed in December, and they have continued to this day.
Opponents of law in secular India, including both Hindus and Muslims, argue that it is unconstitutional for singling out a religious group. They say it is part of a larger plan by Modi's right-wing, Hindu nationalist government to marginalise the country's 200 million Muslims.
"We don't sleep at night"
The latest clashes kicked off in Delhi on Sunday, the eve of President Donald Trump's first state visit to India.
Houses, shops, cars, and mosques were gutted as mobs armed with sticks, stones, and Molotov cocktails ransacked at least 10 neighborhoods in northeast Delhi. There has been no official breakdown of the casualty figures, but local reports suggest the majority of the dead and injured are Muslims. But Hindus, including members of the security services, are among those to have been killed.
A resident in Mustafabad, one of the worst-hit areas in the capital, who wished to be identified only as Ahmed, told CBS News the trouble started when a mob shouting Hindu religious slogans tried to break up a sit-in protest against the new citizenship law, which had been carrying on peacefully for 40 days.
"They started throwing stones at the protesters, who then retaliated," he said.
A group of men chanting pro-Hindu slogans beat Mohammad Zubair, 37, who is Muslim, during protests sparked by a new citizenship law in New Delhi, India, February 24, 2020.
DANISH SIDDIQUI/REUTERS
Police have been accused of failing to stop such aggression against Muslims. On Wednesday, India's Supreme Court said timely action by the police could have saved lives, and the Delhi High Court also chastised the police for failing to file cases against politicians who gave hate speeches days before the clashes began.
"The police did nothing. They just gave the rioters a free hand," said Ahmed. "They didn't even let ambulances come into our areas."
Ahmed said the Hindu attackers were not from the adjacent, Hindu-majority area of Shiv Vihar, whom he and his neighbors know well. He said those neighbors had even given "refuge to hundreds of Muslims who fled when the militant mobs were on rampage." In other words, the attacking mob was not a local group, but from outside the immediate area, according to Ahmed.
"There is so much fear and tension we don't sleep at night," said Jamal, another resident who uses only one name. "We remain on guard in the streets the whole night."
"I know five people who have died in our locality; four of them have bullet wounds and one was stabbed," he told CBS News.
Fearing further violence, dozens of families from the worst affected areas — both Muslims and Hindus — have moved out to safer places in the sprawling capital city, further afield.
People look out near a burnt-out and damaged shop at the riot-hit area following clashes between people supporting and opposing a cententious amendment to India's citizenship law, in New Delhi on February 27, 2020.
MONEY SHARMA/AFP/Getty
The Delhi judge who accused the police of failing to cite politicians for hate speech was transferred to a different court later the same night. The government called his transfer "routine," and said it had been arranged previously. The new judge heard the case on Thursday and gave the government one month to tell the court what action it has taken against the politicians for their alleged hate speech.
An address by a Hindu leader of Prime Minister Modi's own party sparked the complaints of hate speech. Kapil Mishra had told a crowd, in front of a senior police officer, that he had appealed to the police to clear the anti-citizenship law protest sites.
"I want to tell them (police) that we will stay silent until Trump's departure, but after that we will not even listen to you," Mishra said.
Journalists attacked
Several journalists who covered the recent clashes have said they were threatened, heckled, and in some instances even beaten by the mobs.
Times Now correspondent Parbina Purkayashtha told CBS News she was surrounded by a group of men with sticks in their hands while she was reporting live on camera in the Maujpur area Sunday evening.
"They said they would kill me," she said. "I sat down, cried and pleaded with them to let me go, but they didn't listen. They were about to hit me with a stick when one of them told them not to and I ran for my life."
"I was scared they would catch me for being a journalist, molest me for being a girl, lynch me for being a Muslim," another journalist, Ismat Ara, wrote about her experience covering the clashes.
She told CBS News it would "take some time to recover from all this."
Washington — President Trump announced Wednesday night that he's placing Vice President Mike Pence in charge of efforts to tackle the coronavirus, as the administration seeks to reassure the public and the markets amid the global coronavirus outbreak. The president, speaking for only the second time from the White House press briefing room, tried to instill confidence that his administration is on top of the health epidemic.
Speaking to reporters while flanked by Pence, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and other officials on his coronavirus task force, the president said the risk to Americans from the virus is "very low," even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warns Americans to prepare for disruptions of their normal lives and the spread of the virus is a matter of if, not when. Mr. Trump appeared to disagree with that assessment.
"I don't think it's inevitable. It probably will. It possibly will. It could be at a very small level or it could be at a larger level. Whatever happens, we're totally prepared," the president told reporters.
Minutes after the president ended his press conference, the CDC announced a confirmed case of the virus in California in someone "who reportedly did not have relevant history or exposure to another known patient with COVID-19," the official name for the virus that experts believe originated in China.
President Trump holds a news conference with members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the coronavirus outbreak at the White House on February 26, 2020.
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Azar is remaining the head of the president's coronavirus task force, but Pence said the administration will add personnel to the White House to address the outbreak, and work closely with Congress to address the situation.
Democrats and some Republicans are suggesting the $2.5 billion in funding the president has requested from Congress isn't enough. Mr. Trump, who said $2.5 billion is a "lot," said his administration is willing to spend "whatever's appropriate" to address the outbreak.
Part of that funding is going towards developing a vaccine, which is still at least 12 to 18 months away, Dr. Andrew Fauci of the National Institutes of Health told reporters. Senators had offered similar estimates after a briefing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
"We can't rely on a vaccine over the next several months to a year," Fauci said.
Earlier in the day, Azar said in a congressional briefing that he couldn't guarantee price controls when a vaccine is developed, sparking concerns about affordability even when a vaccine is available to the general public.
The president, when asked, said schools should be preparing for the virus to spread.
Mr. Trump has blamed news outlets and Democrats of stoking panic, as stocks suffered three days of steep losses on fears about the virus' impact. Pelosi criticized the president's response to the virus as underwhelming, and Mr. Trump took the opportunity Wednesday night to hit back at the speaker, calling her incompetent and suggesting she isn't capable of managing her own district.
"She's trying to create a panic, and there's no reason to panic," Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump appeared to express confidence in Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying the Chinese leader is working "very hard" to combat the outbreak. The president's own top officials, like economic adviser Larry Kudlow, have expressed they don't think China is being transparent enough with its information, and is blocking U.S. health officials from entering the country.
The president highlighted his administration's efforts to screen people coming from high-risk areas, and temporary ban on non-citizens coming to the U.S. from China. That action, Mr. Trump said, is critical.
"Had I not made a decision very early on not to take people from a certain area, we wouldn't be talking this way," Mr. Trump said. "We'd be talking about many more people being infected. I took a lot of heat. Some people called me racist because I made a decision so early. And we had never done that as a country before, let alone early. So, it was a bold decision. Turned out to be a good decision."
The administration has been inconsistent in its statements about the virus, which started last last year in China. There are now tens of thousands of cases worldwide and a handful in the United States.
The pieces of information about the virus coming from the administration have, at times, been inconsistent.
Kudlow asserted Tuesday on CNBC that "we have contained this ... I won't say airtight, but pretty close to airtight." And Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, was caught making inaccurate statements about the coronavirus during a hearing Tuesday.
On Capitol Hill, Democrats and Republicans alike have expressed frustration with administration officials about inconsistencies in the information they're providing. GOP Senator John Kennedy grew testy with Wolf, who incorrectly stated what the coronavirus mortality rate is, compared to the flu virus. Wolf also testified that the U.S. is "several months" away from a vaccine for the coronavirus, but the CDC said the timeline is closer to 12 to 18 months.
"You're head of Homeland Security, sir. Your job is to keep us safe," Kennedy told Wolf after he couldn't answer how many coronavirus cases are expected in the United States.
President Donald Trump has appealed for calm and put Vice President Mike Pence in charge of America's coronavirus response, insisting the country is "very, very ready" to tackle the deadly disease even if it starts to spread more widely inside the U.S.
Mr. Trump said the risk to Americans remained very low, but his bid to ease nerves — and shore up jittery stock markets in an election year — came as officials confirmed the first case of suspected "community transmission" of the COVID-19 disease in the country: a patient in California with no recent travel history to coronavirus hotspots or known contact with infected people.
The World Health Organization continues to say there's time to rein in the virus that emerged late last year in central China, and is declining to label it a global pandemic. But with cases in more than 40 countries, the WHO chief said it was "deeply concerning" to see the disease spreading fast outside China, most significantly in South Korea, Italy and Iran.
South Korea announced its largest daily jump in confirmed cases on Thursday, with 505 more patients and a 13th death. There were almost 1,800 people infected in South Korea, the largest outbreak to date outside China. With an American service member among those infected, the U.S. has postponed scheduled joint military drills with South Korea and urged Americans to avoid travel to the country.
Former Homeland Security official on U.S. coronavirus response
Italy, home to the biggest outbreak outside Asia and the source of smaller disease clusters in neighboring European countries, saw a 25% increase in cases on Wednesday. The virus has also gained a foothold in the Middle East, spreading to a growing number of countries from Iran, where there are widespread concerns the government is under-reporting the true scale of the outbreak.
In this photo illustration, a woman sprays disinfectant onto her hands in Berlin, Germany, on February 26. As the novel coronavirus spreads across Asia, people have rushed to stock up on sanitation and cleaning products. In major cities like Hong Kong, stores sold out of hand sanitizer, toilet rolls, face masks, disinfecting wipes, and more.
In this photo illustration, a woman sprays disinfectant onto her hands in Berlin, Germany, on February 26. As the novel coronavirus spreads across Asia, people have rushed to stock up on sanitation and cleaning products. In major cities like Hong Kong, stores sold out of hand sanitizer, toilet rolls, face masks, disinfecting wipes, and more.
Florian Gaertner/Getty Images
The novel coronavirus has gone global. What had began as an outbreak in China is now threatening to become a worldwide pandemic, having reached every continent except Antarctica.
Since it was first identified in mid-December, the virus has killed more than 2,800 worldwide. Though the vast majority of those deaths have occurred in Hubei, the province at the center of the initial outbreak, new clusters are fast expanding outside of China, in countries as diverse as Iran, Italy and South Korea.
In the past week alone, 20 countries confirmed their first cases of the coronavirus, mostly in Europe and the Middle East.
On Wednesday, for the first time, there were more cases reported outside China that inside, according to data from the World Health Organization.
Globally, more than 3,200 cases have now been confirmed outside of China, bringing the total number to more than 82,000.
As anxiety and fear spreads around the world, international authorities are scrambling to contain the virus. Numerous countries are closing borders, placing cities on lockdown, and implementing stringent quarantine measures; Italy has effectively quarantined 100,000 people.
This rise in public fear has seen shops in Italy and other hard-hit regions sell out of medical supplies like face masks -- an echo of the same panic buying that had gripped Asia just earlier this month.
And though the WHO has yet to call the outbreak a pandemic, international experts are warning that people should get ready for such an escalation.
"Ultimately we expect we will see community spread in this country," said Nancy Messonnier, a director at the US Center of Disease Control and Prevention. "It's not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness."
