ISTANBUL, Oct 6, (Agencies): Turkey returned fire after Syrian mortar bombs landed in a field in southern Turkey on Saturday, the day after Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan warned Damascus that Turkey would not shy away from war if provoked.
It was the fourth day of Turkish retaliation for firing by Syrian forces that killed five Turkish civilians on Wednesday.
The exchanges are the most serious cross-border violence in Syria’s conflict, which began as a democracy uprising but has evolved into a civil war with sectarian overtones. They highlight how the crisis could destabilise the region.
NATO-member Turkey was once an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad but turned against him after his violent response to an uprising in which more than 30,000 people have died, according to the United Nations.
Turkey has nearly 100,000 Syrian refugees in camps on its territory, has allowed rebel leaders sanctuary and has led calls for Assad to quit. Its armed forces are far larger than Syria’s.
Erdogan said on Friday his country did not want war but warned Syria not to make a “fatal mistake” by testing its resolve. Damascus has said its fire hit Turkey accidentally.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Saturday that parliament’s authorisation of possible cross-border military action was designed as a deterrent.
“From now on, if there is an attack on Turkey it will be silenced,” he said in an interview with state broadcaster TRT.
Western powers have backed fellow-NATO member Turkey over Syria but shown little appetite for the kind of intervention that helped topple Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Turkish calls for a safe zone in Syria would require a no-fly zone that NATO states are unwilling to police.
Davutoglu said international mediator on Syria Lakhdar Brahimi would come to Turkey before Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Ankara within the next 10 days.
Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby called Brahimi’s Syria mission “virtually impossible”, in a newspaper interview.
Asked about the efforts of the Egypt-Saudi-Turkey-Iran quartet to solve the crisis, Elaraby said: “The solution must comprise Iran. The important thing is that matters get moving.”
The 18-month-old Syrian revolt increasingly pits a Sunni Muslim opposition against Assad’s Alawite minority, an offshoot of the Shi’ite Islam that dominates in Iran, whose government backs Damascus.
Rebels in the Syrian city of Aleppo said government troops tried to storm the Sakhour district on Saturday but were pushed back after heavy clashes. Activists across Syria said there was fighting in several cities and towns including the central city of Homs and in Damascus countryside.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 60 people, including 36 government soldiers, were killed across the country on Saturday in clashes.
Syrian rebel forces are riven by divisions but Syrian government forces appear to lack the numbers to land a knockout blow and permanently hold rebellious areas.
U.S. President Barack Obama on Sept. 25 accused Iran of helping keep Assad in power but has refused to arm Syria’s rebels, partly for fear some of those fighting Assad’s rule are Islamist radicals equally hostile to the West.
Iran on Saturday called for the immediate release of Iranians held captive by Syrian rebels and said it would hold the rebels and their supporters responsible for their lives.
Syrian rebels seized a busload of 48 Iranians in early August on suspicion of being military personnel. Tehran says they were pilgrims visiting a Shi’ite shrine in Damascus.
At least three rounds fired from Syria landed inside Turkey’s Yayladagi district on Saturday, the office of the governor of the Turkish province of Hatay said.
It said the fire appeared to have been aimed by Syrian forces at rebels along the border. There were no casualties. Turkish border troops fired back mortars in response.
There were two similar incidents in Hatay on Friday, when Erdogan issued his warning.
“Those who attempt to test Turkey’s deterrence, its decisiveness, its capacity, I say here they are making a fatal mistake,” he said in a bellicose speech to a crowd in Istanbul.
“We are not interested in war, but we’re not far from war either. This nation has come to where it is today having gone through intercontinental wars,” he said.
Turkish artillery bombarded Syrian military targets on Wednesday and Thursday, killing several Syrian soldiers after Syria’s initial fatal bombardment. The UN Security Council condemned the original Syrian attack.
Russia, a staunch ally of Syria, said it received assurances from Damascus the strike on Turkey was an accident but Erdogan dismissed them, saying Syrian fire had repeatedly hit Turkey.
Wednesday’s Syrian strike on the town of Akcakale was of a different magnitude to previous incidents, a Turkish official told Reuters.
“Wednesday was different. There were five or six rounds into the same place. That’s why we responded a couple of times, to warn and deter. To tell the (Syrian) military to leave. We think they’ve got the message and have pulled back from the area.”
Syria has since ordered its warplanes and helicopters not to go within 10 km (six miles) of the Turkish border and artillery units not to fire shells close to the border, according to Turkish broadcaster NTV. Syria has not confirmed this.
Turkey’s state-run Anatolian news agency said a large number of Turkish troops had been sent to the Oncupinar border area of Kilis province.
Town
Nearly 50 soldiers and rebels were killed on Saturday in clashes near Syria’s northern border, as Turkey hit back against what it said was new mortar fire from inside Syria.
Damascus, for its part, said four Turks were among a convoy of “terrorists” killed in the heart of Aleppo, just hours after UN condemnation of deadly jihadist bombings in the country’s commercial capital.
Forty government soldiers and nine rebels were killed when rebels took a town in the northwestern province of Idlib near the border, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“The clashes at Khirbat al-Joz... ended when fighters of the rebel brigades took control of the area,” said the Britain-based watchdog.
“The fighting lasted more than 12 hours and resulted in at least 40 dead among the regular forces, including five officers, and nine (rebel) fighters,” it added after earlier reporting 25 soldiers and three rebels dead.
Meanwhile, Mokhtar Lamani, the head of UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi’s office in Syria, met rebel members on Saturday, a UN official told AFP.
Lamani visited the Jat area some 50 kms (30 miles) south of Damascus and “met leaders of the armed opposition,” spokesman Khaled al-Masri said, as part of contacts with all parties in the conflict.
The meeting came “as part of Lakhdar Brahimi’s mission to make contact with and discuss with all Syrian parties to hear their points of view regarding the Syria crisis,” he added.
Masri said Lamani visited Lajat after a trip to Daraa in the south, cradle of the anti-regime uprising that broke out in March of last year.
On September 30, Lamani met a rebel Free Syrian Army commander in the town of Talbisseh in Homs province.
He held talks with Colonel Kassem Saadeddine and other members of the FSA, which is made up of army deserters and civilians who have taken up arms against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Lamani also met the governor of Homs province, Ghassan Abdelaal, and representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Syrian Red Crescent.
Assad laid a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier in Damascus on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the 1973 Middle East war, as his troops faced mounting losses at the hands of a domestic uprising.
State television carried pictures of Assad laying the wreath at the monument at Mount Kassioun on the outskirts of the capital.
The beleaguered president has made a handful of appearances since the uprising began against his regime in March 2011, usually receiving diplomats for closed-door meetings as opposed to rarer public outings.
In September, Assad notably received international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi as well as Ali Akbar Salehi, foreign minister of Syria’s staunch regional ally Iran.
In August, Assad joined prayers at a Damascus mosque for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr.
But the last major public foray was March 27, when Assad toured the former rebel stronghold of Baba Amr in Homs city in a bid to show normalcy had returned after hundreds of people, many of them civilians, were killed when the army overran the district.
Syria’s defense minister says the rebellion against President Bashar Assad’s regime will be crushed.
Gen Fahd Jassem al-Freij told state-run Syrian TV on Saturday that violence in the country will end soon, as troops are determined to bring back stability.
Al-Freij rarely makes public statements. His remarks came as Syrian troops launched a major offensive to retake rebel-held areas in the northern city of Aleppo and the central city of Homs.
In comments marking the anniversary of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, al-Freij said the government is ready to give amnesty to rebels who “repent.”
Condemned
The UN Security Council on Friday condemned “in the strongest terms” four deadly suicide bombings in Syria’s largest city after Syria requested the condemnation.
The Aleppo bombings, which killed scores of civilians, happened at about the same time Wednesday as Syria’s cross-border shelling that killed five women and children in Turkey. The council on Thursday condemned the shelling, and Syria’s UN ambassador asked the council to address the bombings as well.
Thursday’s condemnation of the shelling represented a key concession by Russia, Syria’s top ally, which has vetoed three council resolutions in recent months aimed at ending a civil war that activists say has left 30,000 dead. The council overcame deep divisions before calling on the Syrian government “to fully respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbors.”
An al-Qaeda-linked group, Jebhat al-Nusra, has claimed credit for the Aleppo bombings.
Syria’s UN ambassador, Bashar Ja’afari, called the bombings “suicide terrorist attacks” and said some of the bombers traveled through the Turkish-Syrian border.
Guatemala’s UN Ambassador Gert Rosenthal, the current Security Council president, read a council statement Friday that expressed “deep sympathy and sincere condolences to the families of the victims of these heinous acts and to the people of Syria.”
The council also called on nations combatting terrorism to comply with international law, “in particular international human rights, refugee and humanitarian law.”
Syria’s cross-border shelling killed five women and children in Turkey. Turkey retaliated with artillery strikes that went deep into Syria.
Ja’afari said Thursday that his government was not seeking any escalation of violence with Turkey. He read reporters a letter he delivered to the Security Council that sent Syria’s “deepest condolences” to the families of the victims.
The letter also urged Turkey and Syria’s other neighbors to “act wisely, rationally and responsibly” and to prevent cross-border infiltration of “terrorists and insurgents.”
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed alarm at the escalating border tensions and warned Thursday that the risks of a region-wide conflict were increasing.