Turkey's top diplomat travelled to Damascus on Thursday as Ankara said foreign fighters must be expelled from Syria, after an agreement spearheaded by the war-torn country's new authorities to disband armed groups.

Flanked by Turkey's defence minister and its spy chief, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan was paying a "working visit" to Syria, the ministry said in a statement, without further details.

Fidan was due to meet with Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, who led the Islamist HTS group that overthrew Bashar al-Assad in December, according to state-run TRT television.

It is his second visit to Damascus after he became the first foreign minister to travel there, two weeks after Assad's ouster.

The visit comes three days after Syria's new authorities forged an agreement with the head of the Kurdish-dominated........

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