china hello i'm maryanne demasi in london with the top stories from europe including a shock in german politics and the american succession plans to railed by arab parents announcing she's stepping down as head of the governing party. and far as well have all the day's sport including the asian champions league group stages are underway with defending champions our hell out of winning start. but we begin in syria where government forces have killed 5 turkish soldiers in the northwestern it live province a turkish base in the region came under heavy shelling has deployed soldiers in response to the syrian army's recent advances and in retaliation for that attack on the base turkey says it's hit more than 100 syrian government targets meanwhile opposition fighters have begun a military offensive to push back against the government's video appears to show rebels with newly supplied turkish armored vehicles edward province and parts of neighboring aleppo are syria's last opposition strongholds to the 700000 people have been displaced by facing in this part of the country since december. well government troops and their allies are advancing with the help of russian air power they've captured nearly all of the m 5 highway which links some of syria's biggest cities aleppo damascus and latakia the roads is crucial for the government's economic livelihoods after nearly 9 years of war well turkey has 12 observation posts in the provinces along its borders several of which are now surrounded by syrian troops including the one that came under fire on monday that's prone to turkey and the syrian opposition groups it supports to strike back against syrian forces let's get more now from c.n.n. course you'll lose she joins us from turkey's hatay near the border with syria as cinema dramatic escalation and what more can you tell us about events there. well 1st of all this escalation this recent escalation between iraq and damascus seems to be the major exco escalation and the highest escalation since the syrian civil war a war began 9 years ago and today's incident came came after. turkish military base turkish aabs new observation post which is a tough that as a military base that was taken over the syrian government a couple of days ago was attacked by the syrian army for syrian government forces turkey says that they had to retaliate and they had artillery shelling over syrian government forces at the end of this incident as you know 5 turkish soldiers were killed $500.00 and they were all evacuated from syria out of border city hot side. and sent to the fact that sent to families and the wounded were taken for a treatment that the defense ministry is it is a statement shows they were able to target more than $100.00 around 115 targets as far as i know those targets were in 7 different locations and. according to what the military were was able to intercept from syrian government forces talk us around 105 syrian army members soldiers have been killed during this retaliate and i have to say that turkey vows to continue its reinforcements to protect us military observation posts inside lip and these poles were brought here according to our stan and such agreements as the as part of the escalation deal so the main objective of this observation post was to observe the cease fire and the escalation violations however since the syrian government forces have violated the cease fire and the escalation zone agreement turkey started to. store up for the reinforced these military posts and not only to be. checked the soldiers but also to protect the civilians being pushed from south to north and being displaced but on the other hand we're hearing that the syrian government forces also keep reinforcing and so this reinforcement is being used as a tool for a possible deterrence doesn't seem to work and for the very 1st time in this syrian civil war on qur'an damascus are about to confront each other's so far when you speak to the military experts security experts or diplomat diplomats in turkey no one is able to figure out what's going to happen whether turkey and syrian state is going to get into war or will they come up with an agreement they were there were talks between turkish and russian delegations in ankara today it was a 2nd talks within the last 3 days but nothing came up so i'm hearing from ankara i'm talking to some politicians they're telling me that they're not expecting much from russia either so what's going to happen is totally and i know right now inside at the especially in syria. and syria turkey and moscow triangle ok seen in course the early reporting live for us from i thank you very much in deeds of course caught in the middle of all of this are the syrian people themselves let's get more on the humanitarian aspect from kenya rahmani he's an advocacy manager with the syrian campaign a human rights group and joins us on skype from irvine good to have you with us here on al-jazeera sub-saharan figures were hearing 700000 people displaced since december 100000 people since last month i mean these are staggering statistics which you say this is one of the worst humanitarian crises of the ongoing war. absolutely the situation in syria could not be more dire these are the worst numbers that we've seen in 9 years of war we have as you said 700000 people displaced that out of a population of roughly 3 and a half 1000000 half of these people have been displaced from other parts of the country and were living in live under the deescalation agreement of us donna and as the correspondent mentioned turkey has created up servatius points in order to ensure the safety of this the escalation zone but the russian and assad regime forces continually violate the ceasefire agreement the most recent cease fire agreement was reached just less than a month ago and now we're seeing violations happening over the past couple weeks the situation just in the past 24 hours 33 civilians have been killed last week 3 hospitals were bombed by russia and the assad regime in less than 24 hours this is a brutal military campaign and people on the ground have nowhere to go the turkish border is sealed is closed not allowing anyone to leave people are literally camped out under the all of trees along the turkish border and the situation is just absolutely the worst we have seen in 9 years and unfortunately the u.n. is not really doing anything about it the international community as a whole with the exception of turkey which has taken a stand recently in order to stop the flow of refugees and to protect the civilians in this area no one has done anything and doctors in live are calling on u.n. secretary general areas to to come inside it live and to be there with the people to ensure that this military escalation stops when he say that turkey. the only one who's doing something to protect these people what circuit boards are and that we have these 2 sites advancing towards each other is there a chance that these people are going to be caught between 2 advancing armies and what happens to them well just far the people on the ground are being displaced because of the advances by the assad regime the massive displacement that we've seen is because the acid regime in russia have pursued a scorched earth policy of collective punishment to on civilians the towns into which the as a regime has advanced. include moderate deny man and so rocket and many other towns in the suburbs of these 2 cities these towns have been completely displeased there's no one left in these towns everyone has been moved so. the real danger is the continued advances of the assad regime and it seems that turkey has moved its military in because the as the regime continues to advance despite the cease fire agreement and the hope the hope of syrian civilians on the ground is that turkey can stop this advance by the assad regime and go back to a ceasefire which russia and turkey and the other regime can agree to while we have to wait and see if the sides to agree to any kind of cease fire but for that we will keep a close eye on the situation great to get your thoughts ken on rahmani joining us there from irvine. well it seems in the world health organization has no arrives in china to investigate what more can be done to contain the corona virus i break ours before they landed chinese officials counted $97.00 more deaths that's the biggest single day jump since the outbreak began it brings the death toll to at least $910.00 people well the world health organization says it's particularly worried about the virus spreading which in people who've never been to china which it adds could be the spark that becomes a larger fire well in london scientists are working on a possible vaccine testing one animals are set to begin on monday and it could be ready to test on humans in a few months the number of cases has risen to more than 40 sayas and globally and in japan dozens more people are confirmed so you have contracted the virus on a quarantined cruise ship there are at least $130.00 cases on board that vessel or back in china millions of people were expected to head back to work after an extended holiday period finally came to an end spots in a year imports from beijing many stayed home. street is usually bustling crowds but this week it's living up to its name the loony holiday has ended but fears of the crude a virus are keeping many businesses closed. leda his store is one of the few that are open that customers are scarce but he's still careful about who he allows inside delivery men are kept at a distance. how you would hire should come to your entire door that deliver driver has been to too many places and has had contact with too many people so i need to be walk around workers like him. those staying indoors reliably as drivers for food and assess it is but the threat of the virus is taking its toll you know you through italy and of course i am scared this virus is very serious but what can i do i have to keep this job all i can do now is wearing the mask and gloves. millions of workers have yet to return to the city those who have missed telephone or she's which provinces they have travelled from. beijing's usually crowded subway is operating at half capacity those not wearing masks are being turned away before entering residential compounds or office buildings people must 1st have beds temperature checked. those spawn the temperature is higher than 37.5 degrees celsius let's go directly to a hospital to be tested. in hot the epicenter of the outbreak streets remain deserted residents are allowed to leave home only to collect food and supplies but elsewhere scenes up so quiet. unverified videos of people being forced from their homes into quarantine that are circulating on chinese social media the world health organization has called for calm it sent a team to china to observe the government's response brings some of the world class epidemiologist from the governor that will be able to really understand the transmission dynamics going on understand the severity of illness understand the challenges that china is facing with this outbreak and it will really give the world hopefully a good glimpse of what's going on in china medical experts say the majority of coronavirus cases are mild but many in china are not taking any chances to train e.u. al-jazeera beijing. and china's president sitting peon with saints in a beijing neighborhood wearing a face mask promising the fight against the virus will be won him brain has more we haven't seen much of president xi jinping during the past couple of weeks that changed on monday when state television broadcast pictures of him visiting a district of beijing he met neighborhood representatives volunteers and medical workers and there he was wearing a surgical face miles i think that's possibly the 1st time we've seen the chinese president wearing a face mask he also had his temperature taken this was president xi jinping doing his best to burnish his man of the people image he also came to deliver a message he said that together the chinese people the country can overcome this virus if they work together you know. we must fight the battle for total warfare and the people's war against the epidemic with full confidence we must have the confidence that we will definitely when president xi jinping also wanted to deliver another reassuring message today and that was on jobs he said that the government would prevent large scale job losses that's because of course china's economy has been battered by this fire as thousands of factories across the country are now standing idle it's a reminder that the world depends on china for so much but so much of what is producing simply isn't leaving the country and this cern one of the world's largest car producers in japan announced it was shutting production of one of its major plants the problem is the supply chain just last week high on day a south korean car manufacturer said it was having to hold production because it couldn't get the parts it needed from china it's bad now it's going to get much worse. well the u.k. screwed a virus efforts are provoking debates and questions about the wood galaxy of its response let's get more now from mary in the masi crosser in our european broadcast center. yeah that's right a stark warning we've had from the department of health care and it comes after a passenger who returned from china on an evacuation flight threatened to leave a quarantine facility now under these new measures people with corona virus can be forcibly quarantined and will not be free to leave their all for new cases of the disease including 2 health care workers who tested positive for the virus and a medical center in brighton on the south coast of england is now closed overall there are 8 confirmed cases in the u.k. for more on this let's speak to dr richard doll and he is a specialist in travel medicine joins us live via skype 1st of all what does this declaration from the health department mean well we're now entering. its very. very very long time. in this country. basically the new. level of public health threat that has been declared gives the public health authorities the right to legally to. people who would prevent the spread of disease when you say it's been a while how unusual is this particularly within the region all the other countries in europe implementing these measures. i'm not quite sure what's going on in other countries but the last time we had quarantine legislation enforced. in the u.k. the main u.k. you got to go back as far as the plague outbreaks of the 1600s to find 2 accords in being in full force that was a village that serves as the quarantine gets over 1665. there is legislation that dates to the 1700s as a result but was never used because legislation traced to shipping the last instance i can find of that was in the 8090s when ships returning fruit. the seas were unseen right is that really puts it in some historical context for 4000 in terms of what prompted this declaration how important is it that these new cases came into contact with someone that was previously confined case so in other words has been a lot of debate about that these so-called super spread as people that we do shed quite a bit of the disease and that can really accelerate transmission. so that moment a quarantine rules mainly from the appliance people groups in china and particularly the emergency rescue flights for a. problem. so initially there was a kind of an individual contract that was offered to each of. the so the issue is that it's not much fun being stuck in quarantine i'm sure that there are lots of things that would. lead coming to. concert with fellow quorums in the so it's not surprising people feel the need all the. want to discontinue this wrench not really what's prompted this escalation it's not that the threat has changed so much as the willingness of people to remain and 14 days is a long time to remain. under quarantine conditions appreciate your time thank you very much dr richard doll it. now our other top story the woman designated to pace german chancellor angela merkel has unexpectedly quit as leader of the governing c.d.u. party and a great crowd of karrenbauer is stepping down after a crisis over at the session by regional representatives to vote alongside the far right a.f.p. that broke a longstanding agreement among mainstream parties to shun the far right clips crown karrenbauer has been the head of the c.d.u. since taking over from merkel end of 2018 party miss now elect a new chief to take it into the general election next year let's go live now to dominic cain who is following the story from ballin what has happened in the cd this week downing. well effectively what is happening here is the disintegration of the role of camp who'd been seen by many people when she won election to being leader of the party as being mayor cool 2.0 merkel like her protege someone who would grow into the role and eventually supplant angle americal as the lead candidate for the christian democrats in the general election which must happen by the late summer early autumn of 2021 instead of her career now certainly her ambitions to be chances are dashed or shattered she will stay in her role as defense secretary in the cabinet but there's no question she will not lead the party into that election i was referring to the thing also to say here is that the christian democrats now find themselves in a dilemma because they have a colossus politically in angola americal who is by far the most popular politician in germany but she's going to go and as things stand it's not entirely clear who will replace angle americal and indeed more in so far as the need for a new leader is concerned and a good camp can be in the next few months right so those are the implications for the c.d.u. what could this potentially mean for the country for germany. well it's a very particular question isn't it because right now interestingly enough every mainstream party does not know who is going to lead it into the general election in 2021 the schlitz and candidate it's called injury the lead candidate the person who would if that party won a majority or could build a coalition would become the chancellor not one mainstream party right now knows who it would be so it means that the direction the parties want to go in is still in some ways up for grabs the person who many people say might consider running for the christian democrats is a man called friedrich mounts a one time friend ally of angola machall who she sidelined some many years ago but he's come back from the world on us and he fought very close in that election in 2018 he is favored by many but he's not a centrist he's seen as being to the right of the party who would take the party more to the right politically and then for the other parties they have to really start thinking about who might take them in a new direction and that vote is in 2021 thank you very much for that cane i say a bit later in the news hour now back to. african union leaders have voted to push push peace efforts in libya a sign of their desire to play a bigger role in resolving the continent's conflicts this year's summit in ethiopia was titled silencing the guns so if african president serial ramaphosa who took over as a chair said violence in south sudan and libya will be the focus of his tenure and the peace and security council repeated calls for outside powers to stop interfering in libya. we want this iteration of forcibly to be fully respected. we want me un embargo on armaments to libya also to be strictly respected and 3rd we want an immediate cessation of all external interventions and interferences in libyan affairs. at least 30 people have been killed in a suspected book around the track in northeastern nigeria it happened just 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