Turkey fires at Syria after deadly shelling

Smoke rises Tues­day over Saif Al Dawla dis­trict in Aleppo, Syria. The U.N.‘s deputy secretary-general says U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon made a strong appeal to Syria’s for­eign min­is­ter to stop using heavy weapons against civil­ians and reduce the vio­lence that is killing 100 to 200 peo­ple every day. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Manu Brabo)

CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA

ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY

Asso­ci­ated Press

BEIRUT — Turk­ish artillery fired on Syr­ian tar­gets Wednes­day after shelling from Syria struck a bor­der vil­lage in Turkey, killing five civil­ians, sharply esca­lat­ing ten­sions between the two neigh­bors and prompt­ing NATO to con­vene an emer­gency meeting.

“Our armed forces at the bor­der region responded to this atro­cious attack with artillery fire on points in Syria that were detected with radar, in line with the rules of engage­ment,” the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment said in a state­ment from the prime minister’s office.

The artillery fire capped a day that began with four bombs tear­ing through a government-held dis­trict in Syria’s com­mer­cial and cul­tural cap­i­tal of Aleppo, killing more than 30 peo­ple and reduc­ing build­ings to rubble.

Along the volatile bor­der, a shell fired from inside Syria landed on a home in the Turk­ish vil­lage of Akcakale, killing a woman, her three daugh­ters and another woman, and wound­ing at least 10 oth­ers, accord­ing to Turk­ish media.

The shelling appeared to come from forces loyal to Syr­ian Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad’s regime, which is fight­ing rebels backed by Turkey in an esca­lat­ing civil war.

“Turkey, act­ing within the rules of engage­ment and inter­na­tional laws, will never leave unrec­i­p­ro­cated such provo­ca­tions by the Syr­ian regime against our national secu­rity,” the office of Prime Min­is­ter Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan said in a statement.

Turk­ish media said Turkey has pre­pared a par­lia­men­tary bill for Syria that is sim­i­lar to one that autho­rizes the Turk­ish mil­i­tary to inter­vene in north­ern Iraq in pur­suit of Kur­dish mil­i­tants who have bases there. The bill is expected to be dis­cussed in par­lia­ment on Thurs­day, Anadolu agency reported.

If approved, the bill could more eas­ily open the way to uni­lat­eral action by Turkey’s armed forces inside Syria, with­out the involve­ment of its West­ern and Arab allies.

Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton said the U.S. was “out­raged that the Syr­i­ans have been shoot­ing across the bor­der,” adding that she would speak with Turk­ish For­eign Min­is­ter Ahmet Davu­to­glu on the matter.

“It’s a very, very dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion,” Clin­ton said. “And all respon­si­ble nations need to band together to per­suade the Assad regime to have a cease-fire, quit assault­ing their own peo­ple and begin the process of a polit­i­cal transition.”

NATO’s National Atlantic Coun­cil, which is com­posed of the alliance’s ambas­sadors, held an emer­gency meet­ing in Brus­sels Wednes­day night at Turkey’s request to dis­cuss the cross-border incident.

The meet­ing ended with a state­ment strongly con­demn­ing the attack and say­ing: “The alliance con­tin­ues to stand by Turkey and demands the imme­di­ate ces­sa­tion of such aggres­sive acts against an ally.” It also urged the Syr­ian regime to “put an end to fla­grant vio­la­tions of inter­na­tional law.”

NATO also held an emer­gency meet­ing when a Turk­ish jet was shot down by Syria in June, killing two pilots.

Turkey wants to avoid going into Syria on its own. It has been push­ing for inter­na­tional inter­ven­tion in the form of a safe zone, which would likely entail for­eign secu­rity forces on the ground and a par­tial no-fly zone. How­ever, the allies fear mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Syria could ignite a wider con­flict, and few observers expect robust action from the United States, which Turkey views as vital to any oper­a­tion in Syria, ahead of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in November.

Accord­ing to Turkey’s NTV sta­tion, the Syr­ian infor­ma­tion min­istry said it had launched an inves­ti­ga­tion into Wednesday’s shelling and expressed sor­row for the deaths of Turk­ish civil­ians. But it urged Turkey to pre­vent the cross-border infil­tra­tion of what it called terrorists.

Turkey, which has moved mil­i­tary rein­force­ments to the bor­der in recent months, has more than 90,000 Syr­ian refugees in camps along its bor­der, and also hosts Syr­ian oppo­si­tion groups.

There is con­cern in Turkey that the Syr­ian chaos could have a desta­bi­liz­ing effect on Turkey’s own com­mu­ni­ties; some observers have attrib­uted a sharp rise in vio­lence by Kur­dish rebels in Turkey to mil­i­tant efforts to take advan­tage of the regional uncertainty.

Call­ing Wednesday’s shelling “yet another exam­ple of the depraved behav­ior of the Syr­ian regime and why it must go,” Pen­ta­gon press sec­re­tary George Lit­tle said the U.S. would con­tinue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion closely.

Turkey’s Anadolu news agency quoted the gov­er­nor of San­li­urfa province, Celat­tin Guven, as say­ing three or four shells fell on the bor­der vil­lage and one hit a house, killing the women and chil­dren. The wounded included two police offi­cers who were shown in tele­vi­sion footage lying in the street as col­leagues tended to them.

There was no imme­di­ate claim of respon­si­bil­ity for the Aleppo bomb­ings ear­lier in the day, but the gov­ern­ment blamed its oppo­nents, say­ing the huge explo­sions were caused by sui­cide attack­ers. The tech­nique is a sig­na­ture of al-Qaida-style jihadist groups, some of which are known to have entered Syria’s civil war to fight against the regime.

“It was like a series of earth­quakes,” a shaken res­i­dent told The Asso­ci­ated Press, ask­ing that his name not be used out of fear for his per­sonal safety. “It was ter­ri­fy­ing, terrifying.”

The Syr­ian gov­ern­ment said the bomb­ings killed 34 peo­ple and injured 122 — although death tolls have been dif­fi­cult to ver­ify. The Britain-based Syr­ian Obser­va­tory for Human Rights, which relies on a net­work of activists on the ground, said at least 40 peo­ple were killed.

The state-run Ikhbariya TV chan­nel showed mas­sive dam­age around Saadal­lah al-Jabri Square, which also houses a famous hotel and a cof­fee shop that had been pop­u­lar with regime forces. One build­ing appeared to have been lev­eled and the facade of another was torn away.

The sta­tion broad­cast video of sev­eral bod­ies, includ­ing one being pulled from a col­lapsed build­ing. Res­cuers stood atop piles of con­crete and debris, fran­ti­cally try­ing to pull out survivors.

Activists could not reach the area, which is con­trolled by secu­rity forces and sealed off with checkpoints.

The upris­ing against Assad began in March 2011 and grad­u­ally became a bloody civil war. The con­flict has killed more than 30,000 peo­ple, activists say, and has dev­as­tated entire neigh­bor­hoods in Syria’s main cities, includ­ing Aleppo.

Syria’s gov­ern­ment has always blamed the upris­ing on what it calls for­eign ter­ror­ists, despite months of peace­ful protests that turned vio­lent after repeated attacks by secu­rity forces. The trans­for­ma­tion of the con­flict into an open war has given an oppor­tu­nity to for­eign fight­ers and extrem­ists, ana­lysts say.

The Syr­ian oppo­si­tion denies any links to ter­ror­ists, but a Sunni extrem­ist group called Jab­hat al-Nusra, or Vic­tory Front, has claimed respon­si­bil­ity for bomb­ings in the past.

After Wednesday’s blasts in Aleppo, regime forces unleashed shelling on rebel-held areas and fired machine guns from air­craft, accord­ing to an Asso­ci­ated Press jour­nal­ist in the city, Syria’s largest with a pop­u­la­tion of 3 million.

At least 15 peo­ple wounded by shelling arrived with seri­ous injuries at the city’s Shifa Hos­pi­tal. All but one were civil­ians. Three bod­ies — an old man, a woman and a mid­dle school-age boy — also were taken to the hospital.

Rebel fight­ers, many with only light weapons, advanced slowly, mov­ing build­ing by build­ing. The heav­ier weapons, such as rocket-propelled-grenade launch­ers, were sent to the front lines to pre­vent the regime from retak­ing areas seized by rebels in the past two months.

Wednesday’s attacks were the lat­est turn in the deadly — and increas­ingly chaotic — fight for con­trol of Aleppo, one of the world’s old­est con­tin­u­ously inhab­ited cities.

Long free of the vio­lence that has engulfed much of the rest of the coun­try in the first year of the upris­ing, Aleppo was struck by two sui­cide car bomb­ings at secu­rity com­pounds in Feb­ru­ary, killing 28 peo­ple. Such attacks tar­get­ing secu­rity agen­cies and sol­diers have become com­mon in Syria, par­tic­u­larly in the cap­i­tal, Damascus.

In the past two months, Aleppo has become a key bat­tle­ground. The oppo­si­tion launched an offen­sive on the city in July, and large swaths have been shattered.

Rebels last week announced a new push to cap­ture Aleppo, which would be a major strate­gic prize and give the vic­tor new momen­tum. It also would pro­vide the oppo­si­tion with a base and easy logis­ti­cal sup­ply lines with Turkey to the north that would allow them to carry out their fight against the regime in the rest of the country.

Aleppo-based activist Moham­mad Saeed said Wednesday’s blasts went off min­utes apart and appeared to be car bombs and were fol­lowed by clashes and heavy gunfire.

Syr­ian state TV said three sui­cide bombers det­o­nated cars packed with explo­sives in Saadal­lah al-Jabri Square, near an offi­cers’ club. The square holds sym­bolic impor­tance for res­i­dents because it is named after a Syr­ian inde­pen­dence fighter who resisted French occupation.

Activists and Syr­ian state media said a fourth car bomb went off a few hun­dred meters (yards) away in the Bab Jnein area near the Old City. It was not imme­di­ately clear how many casu­al­ties there were from that blast.

The Syr­ian Obser­va­tory for Human Rights said mor­tars also tar­geted the nearby polit­i­cal secu­rity depart­ment around the same time of the bombings.

Syria’s Inte­rior Min­istry vowed to “track down the per­pe­tra­tors any­where.” The speaker of the Syr­ian par­lia­ment, Moham­mad Jihad al-Lahham, told the assem­bly that he con­demns “the coun­tries that con­spire against Syria and stand behind the terrorists.”

Posted by AP News on Oct 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.