Turkey to Probe Reports of Bus Attacks in Syria

By MARC CHAMPION

ISTANBUL—Turkey’s foreign ministry said Monday it was investigating reports that Turkish pilgrims were shot at in Syria, leaving two wounded.

Video footage posted on the internet by Syrian pro-Democracy activists showed wounded people being transferred from several buses to ambulances in Hatay, just across the Syrian border in Turkey, apparently after the pilgrims returned.

According to Turkey’s NTV television, the Turkish pilgrims were on their way to Mecca in a convoy of buses on Sunday, when they came under fire near the city of Homs, close to Syria’s border with Lebanon. Three of the buses were hit and two people were injured, including a bus driver, NTV said.

The buses were attacked after they got lost and asked directions at a checkpoint, and then turned back to Turkey, NTV said. It wasn’t certain Monday who fired at the buses; passengers said the Syrian military was responsible.

A spokesman for the foreign ministry confirmed that “an incident” had taken place. “We are looking into it,” he said.

Although close allies until the beginning of this year, Ankara and Damascus have become increasingly hostile since the regime of President Bashar al-Assad began a crackdown on opposition protesters this is believed to have claimed more than 3,500 lives to date.

On Monday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan again lashed out at Mr. Assad. “If you believe in yourself as a leader, if you are confident, you will open the ballot boxes and everyone would go to vote,” Mr. Erdogan said in a speech to a meeting of Muslim clerics from Africa in Istanbul. “But with tanks and cannons you can only lead up to a point. A day will come when you will go too.”

Pro-regime protesters attacked the Turkish embassy in Damascus and consulates elsewhere in the country 10 days ago, in the wake of an Arab League decision to suspend Syria from the organization.

On Monday, several Turkish newspapers cited unnamed government officials saying Ankara had developed contingency plans to impose a military buffer zone or no-fly zone within Syria should the security situation there deteriorate significantly.

“We have no confidence left in the regime, but at the moment we don’t think outside military intervention to be right,” Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul told journalists as he flew to visit the U.K. on Sunday, according to several TV and newspaper reports. “These are things that should be solved within Syria.”

A Turkish official told The Wall Street Journal that Ankara now sought to stay in line with, or one step behind, the Arab League in applying further measures to pressure the Syrian regime.

—Ayla Albayrak in Istanbul contributed to this article.

Write to Marc Champion at [email protected]

via Turkey to Probe Reports of Bus Attacks in Syria – WSJ.com.