Turkey, Syria trade fire; border tensions mount

MEHMET GUZEL

ZEINA KARAM

Asso­ci­ated Press

AKCAKALE, Turkey — Turkey and Syria fired artillery and mor­tars across their volatile bor­der for a fifth con­sec­u­tive day on Sun­day, in one of the most seri­ous and pro­longed flare-ups of vio­lence along the frontier.

The exchange of fire stoked fears that Syria’s civil war will esca­late into a regional con­fla­gra­tion draw­ing in NATO mem­ber Turkey, once an ally of Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad but now a key sup­porter of the rebels fight­ing to top­ple him.

Turk­ish For­eign Min­is­ter Ahmet Davu­to­glu had warned on Sat­ur­day that Ankara would respond force­fully to each errant Syr­ian shell that lands on Turk­ish soil.

Ankara’s warn­ing was cou­pled by an appar­ent diplo­matic push by the Turk­ish lead­er­ship to pro­mote Syr­ian Vice Pres­i­dent Farouk al-Sharaa as a pos­si­ble fig­ure to head a tran­si­tional admin­is­tra­tion to end the con­flict in the country.

In an inter­view with Turk­ish state tele­vi­sion TRT Sat­ur­day, Davu­to­glu said that al-Sharaa was a fig­ure “whose hands are not con­t­a­m­i­nated in blood” and there­fore accept­able to Syr­ian oppo­si­tion groups.

It was not clear whether the Turk­ish stance was coor­di­nated with other allies, but the can­did remarks by Davu­to­glu sug­gested some con­sen­sus might be emerg­ing over a future role for him.

Al-Sharaa, 73, a close asso­ciate and long­time loy­al­ist to the Assad fam­ily, has been a con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure since the start of the uprising.

He appeared in pub­lic in late August for the first time in weeks, end­ing repeated rumors that he had defected. The regime has suf­fered a string of promi­nent defec­tions in recent months, though Assad’s inner cir­cle and mil­i­tary have largely kept their cohe­sive stance behind him.

Early on in the upris­ing, the Syr­ian pres­i­dent del­e­gated to al-Sharaa, a skilled diplo­mat, respon­si­bil­ity for hold­ing a dia­logue with the oppo­si­tion. A Sunni from the south­ern town of Daraa, birth­place of the Syr­ian upris­ing, al-Sharaa’s silence since the start of the upris­ing made him a prime can­di­date for rumors that he broke with the regime.

“No one knows the sys­tem bet­ter than Farouk al-Sharaa,” said Davu­to­glu, adding that al-Sharaa has not been involved in the vio­lence and mas­sacres in Syria.

The Syr­ian oppo­si­tion is deeply frag­mented, and var­i­ous fac­tions would likely dis­agree on whether they would accept him to lead a tran­si­tional government.

Mean­while, there was lit­tle sign that the exchange of fire near the bor­der, although still at a fairly low level, was ebbing. It began five days ago when a Syr­ian shell killed five civil­ians in a Turk­ish bor­der town. Turkey’s par­lia­ment sub­se­quently approved a bill that would allow cross bor­der mil­i­tary oper­a­tions there.

Dam­as­cus offered a rare apol­ogy, but shells and mor­tar rounds con­tinue to fly into Turk­ish territory.

On Sun­day, an Asso­ci­ated Press jour­nal­ist wit­nessed a round land­ing some 200 meters (yards) inside Turkey, near the bor­der town of Akcakale. A short time later, eight artillery shells could be heard fired from Turkey.

In the Turk­ish town of Akcakale, mayor Abdul­hakim Ayhan said shrap­nel from the Syr­ian mor­tar round caused some dam­age to a grain depot, but no one was hurt. He con­firmed that Turk­ish artillery imme­di­ately returned fire.

The Anadolu Agency reported that Assad’s forces have been shelling the town of Tal Abyad, just across from Akcakale, which is con­trolled by Syr­ian rebels.

Turkey’s pri­vate Dogan news agency reported that a six-vehicle mil­i­tary con­voy, includ­ing two car­ry­ing how­itzers, was seen trav­el­ing from the city of Gaziantep toward the Syr­ian border.

Inside Syria, forces loyal to Assad clashed with rebels across the coun­try, from the north­ern city of Aleppo to the south­ern bor­der with Jor­dan, killing accord­ing to activist groups at least 90 peo­ple across the coun­try. Activists said oppo­si­tion fight­ers were strength­en­ing their hold over the vil­lage off Khir­bet al-Jouz, in the north­ern province of Idlib, which bor­ders Turkey and where vio­lent clashes broke out a day earlier.

The Turk­ish state-run Anadolu news agency said Sun­day that the rebels had regained full con­trol of Khir­bet al-Jouz. It said the Syr­ian army was forced to “pull back” fol­low­ing an “offen­sive” by some 700 rebels.

It also reported that Assad’s troops were forced to retreat some 20 kilo­me­ters (12 miles) toward the town of Jisr al-Shughour. It said rebels in Khir­bet al-Jouz cel­e­brated their vic­tory by fir­ing their weapons into the air.

The Britain-based Syr­ian Obser­va­tory for Human Rights said regime forces pulled out of two vil­lages in the Idlib coun­try­side near Turkey. In Khir­bet al-Jouz, wounded Syr­ian sol­diers were left to fend for them­selves after gov­ern­ment troops were forced to retreat from the area, the Obser­va­tory said.

The reports could not be inde­pen­dently con­firmed, and it was not clear whether the wounded sol­diers were cap­tured by the rebels.

In Dam­as­cus, a car bomb exploded in the park­ing lot of the local police head­quar­ters in cen­tral Dam­as­cus, killing one mem­ber of the mil­i­tary, the state-run SANA news agency said. The explo­sion is the lat­est in a series of bombs and sui­cide attack tar­get­ing secu­rity per­son­nel and gov­ern­ment institutions.

Else­where, Syr­ian troops were widen­ing their offen­sive to retake rebel-held areas in the north­ern city of Aleppo and the sub­urbs of Dam­as­cus, as well as the cen­tral province of Homs and vil­lages on the south­ern bor­der with Jordan.

The Obser­va­tory said some of the heav­i­est fight­ing Sun­day was in Aleppo province. At least three peo­ple were killed and scores were wounded when the army pounded the town of Man­baj in Aleppo’s suburbs.

Syria’s defense min­is­ter said Sat­ur­day that the gov­ern­ment is ready to give amnesty to rebels who repent and those who don’t “will be crushed under the feet of our soldiers.”

Gen. Fahd Jassem al-Freij, who became defense min­is­ter in July after his pre­de­ces­sor was assas­si­nated, also claimed that the regime was get­ting the upper hand. “The most dan­ger­ous parts of the con­spir­acy have been passed and the killing is on its way to decline,” he said.

Dam­as­cus denies it is fac­ing a pop­u­lar upris­ing, instead blam­ing the vio­lence on a for­eign con­spir­acy to pun­ish it for its sup­port for anti-Israeli groups such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Despite the government’s claims of being on the brink of restor­ing sta­bil­ity, the vio­lence across the coun­try shows no signs of abat­ing. Activists say that more than 30,000 peo­ple have been killed since the anti-Assad upris­ing began.

Posted by AP News on Oct 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.