Thousands of Syrians escaping violence in the north of the country have crossed the border into Turkey [Reuters]
Thousands continue to take to the streets across Syria, despite the bloody crackdown on protests. Activists say more than 1,300 civilians have been killed by security forces. We bring you the latest news from various sources.
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4 hours 23 min ago – Syria
Hundreds of displaced Syrians have fled into Turkey on Thursday after Syrian troops backed by tanks approached their makeshift camps in the bordering village of Khirbet al-Joz, the AFP news agency has reported.
They were flanked by Turkish paramilitary police vehicles and minibuses, called apparently to ferry the refugees to tent cities the Turkish Red Crescent has erected in the border province of Hatay, where more than 10,000 Syrians are already sheltering.
Security forces fire on demonstrators, as protests are held in several cities after Friday prayers. The U.S. and its allies are said to be weighing additional actions to pressure Syria to end the violence.
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times
June 17, 2011, 4:46 p.m.
Reporting from Beirut—
A Turkish soldier guards at a refugee camp in the town of Boynuyogun in Hatay province. Turkey has called on Syria to immediately halt its violent crackdown on protesters and begin democratic reforms. (Osman Orsal, Reuters / June 18, 2011)
A Turkish soldier guards at a refugee camp in the town of Boynuyogun in Hatay province. Turkey has called on Syria to immediately halt its violent crackdown on protesters and begin democratic reforms. (Osman Orsal, Reuters / June 18, 2011)
Syria suffered through another agonizing day of bloodshed Friday as security forces fired on antigovernment protesters after weekly prayers in several cities across the country.
Human rights activists said at least 24 unarmed people were killed in the violence.
Amateur video showed security forces in military vehicles shooting at children in the southern town of Dail, where activists say a 13-year-old boy was killed and a 16-year-old was critically wounded.
Another clip showed panicking protesters dashing for cover as gunfire erupted in the streets of Homs. Weeping men could be seen carrying the limp body of a man who had apparently been shot in the face.
Syria’s three-month uprising has become the greatest challenge ever to the longtime authoritarian rule of President Bashar Assad and his family. The regime has responded with a brutal military crackdown laden with sectarian overtones.
The developments have sent shock waves across the region and beyond.
In Washington, a senior Obama administration official said the size and persistence of the protests showed that “the fear factor is no longer enough to keep people at home.” Some Syrian opposition members are meeting daily with U.S. Ambassador Robert S. Ford and other embassy officials in Damascus, despite the risk, according to U.S. officials.
The officials said the administration and its allies were weighing measures to pressure Assad, including imposing additional sanctions on Syria’s oil and gas sector. Also under consideration is a recommendation that the International Criminal Court consider charges against members of the Assad regime for the violence against protesters.
Assad’s regime is dominated by Alawites, a small Shiite Muslim offshoot that is estimated to make up 10% of Syria’s population. The majority of Syrians are Sunni Muslims.
In neighboring Lebanon, fresh clashes Friday in a mixed Alawite-Sunni district of Tripoli left at least four people dead and 22 injured. The violence erupted after anti-Assad activists held a large protest in the coastal city, Lebanon’s official news agency reported.
Late Thursday, Assad’s unpopular and powerful cousin, telecommunications tycoon Rami Makhlouf, said he was withdrawing from business and would devote his profits to charity, a claim that could not be verified.
“I will not allow for myself to be a burden on Syria, its people or president. I will put into circulation part of the shares that I possess of Syriatel Mobile Telecom for Syrian citizens with limited income,” he said in a televised appearance.
Makhlouf is already blacklisted by the European Union as one of 13 regime figures behind the violence that, according to rights activists, has killed 1,300 people in three months.
Protesters and activists did not appear to be deterred by the increasingly violent crackdown nor impressed by Makhlouf’s assertion. On social networking websites, they mocked him as “Mother Rami Teresa” and took to the streets to voice their complaints. One activist in the Syrian city of Latakia, who declined to be identified, said the shares were never his to begin with.
“He was made of corruption, and his companies were not made of clean money,” said another Syrian activist, Hozan Ibrahim, who lives in Europe. “That statement was a dirty game by the regime and did nothing and was done in vain. People didn’t believe it.”
Video posted on the Internet showed peaceful protesters at campuses in the capital, Damascus, and its suburbs, as well as in Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city. Other video showed large protests in Homs, the third-largest city; the central city of Hama; and the Kurdish cities of Qamishli and Amouda.
An activist reached by telephone in Homs said thousands had taken to the streets in several neighborhoods.
“The demonstrators from various protests in the city tried to join together, but security forces fired tear gas into the crowds to disperse the protests,” said the activist, who spoke on condition of anonymity. They also chanted in support of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government this week dramatically chilled once-warm ties with Syria over human rights abuses.
“Erdogan, you are the hope for Syrians,” they chanted, according to the activist.
Another video clip uploaded to the Internet showed activists in Latakia ready to set fire to the flags of Iran, Russia and the militant group Hezbollah, all friends of Assad’s regime.
“The people want the overthrow of the regime,” they chanted.
Protests were also reported in the northwestern city of Idlib, the scene in recent weeks of a massive security crackdown; the besieged cities of the Dara region in the south; the coastal city of Baniyas; and Dair Alzour, on the Euphrates River, near the Iraqi border, where troops are massing for what may be a major security operation.
Activists, using themes each Friday to highlight different aspects of the protest movement, dedicated this week’s effort to Sheik Salih ibn Ali, an Alawite leader who fought for Syria’s independence from France in the 1920s. Assad, also an Alawite, has been sharpening sectarian divisions in Syria and the region by deploying troops led by his co-religionists against the Sunni majority.
The unrest, and the regime’s continuing use of military force to quell peaceful protests, has sent thousands of Syrians into neighboring countries, especially Turkey, which has set up tent camps to house an exodus that has reached 10,000 so far.
Actress Angelina Jolie, a goodwill ambassador for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, arrived by private plane Friday in southeastern Turkey to visit refugees in an effort to bring attention to their plight.
Special correspondent Alexandra Sandels in Beirut, a special correspondent in Damascus and Times staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.
Turkey is planning to create a military “buffer zone” for refugees inside the country as protests against the Assad regime spiral, it was claimed on Thursday.
By Andrew Osborn, in Guvecci and Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent
8:57PM BST 16 Jun 2011
A Syrian refugee at a camp in Yayladagi, Turkey Photo: AP
Government sources told a leading Turkish newspaper that soldiers could be sent in to Syria to set up a “safe haven” under plans being considered should the flood of those fleeing the fighting worsened.
“We would close the border but we cannot turn our back,” a Turkish official told the newspaper, Hurriyet. “If chaos starts, then we will have to form a security zone or a buffer zone inside Syrian territory.”
The suggestion, which would be a marked escalation of the crisis and seriously alarm Damascus, came as Turkey faced pressure to take tougher action over the crisis in a neighbour until recently seen as an ally.
Amnesty International on Thursday accused the Turkish government of helping Syria to cover up crimes against its own people by stopping refugees telling their stories to journalists and human rights groups.
It has locked the more than 8,000 refugees who have crossed the border up in fortresslike camps and isolated them from the outside world, even obscuring them from view by covering the fences with blue plastic sheeting.
“The Turkish authorities are effectively gagging the victims,” Neil Sammonds, Amnesty’s Syria expert, told The Daily Telegraph.
“Already there have been three months of widespread killings, often it seems as part of a shoot-to-kill policy, torture, mass arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial executions. These amount to possible crimes against humanity.
“Were Amnesty and other rights groups or journalists able to meet the refugees in the camps and listen to and document their stories it is possible it would stir the international community and especially the United Nations Security Council into condemning the Syrian government.”
Syrian activist groups claim 1,500 people have been killed since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March. In the last week, Syrian forces have moved against two towns close to the border, Jisr al-Shughour and Maraat al-Numaan, where they said troops had been attacked by “armed gangs”.
Refugees said the Syrian army was continuing to make punitive raids on towns and villages in the region. Soma, a 20-year-old farmer, said his village just two miles from the Turkish border had been shelled in the early hours of Thursday and was now in the army’s hands.
“They destroyed it,” he said. “If I go back they will kill me. They want to raze our homes so we cannot return.” Ibrahim, 33, an olive farmer, said he had reliable information about two separate atrocities against women, saying that Syrian security forces were using sexual violence as a weapon.
In the first case, he said a group of 16 soldiers had gang-raped the wife of a pro-democracy activist. In another more recent case two or three days ago in Jisr al-Shughour Syrian soldiers forced three protesters’ wives to strip and serve them tea in the nude in order to humiliate them, he said.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, turned on the Assads last week, accusing the president’s brother, Maher, in particular of “savagery” in putting down protests.
The Hurriyet report said Mr Erdogan was “losing hope” in President Assad but also added he had not yet “burned his bridges” as he had with Col Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, whom he has told to step down.
Mr Sammonds said Turkey was playing a “dubious game” pursuing narrow national interests rather than international justice.
“No one understands why they are doing this but there are plenty of hypotheses,” he said. “One of the more compelling ones is that the Turkish government does not want people inside Syria to know what is going on because it might cause a larger wave of refugees to flee to Turkey.
“Another is that Turkey still wants to maintain good relations with Syria while at the same time making strong statements about reform and the need to end the violence.”
via Turkey to create military ‘buffer zone’ within Syria for refugees – Telegraph.
DAMASCUS—Syria’s military expanded its reach to a fourth border by deploying forces to the remote towns of Deir el-Zour province near the frontier with Iraq, a volatile tribal area, stretching the capacity of its military.
Tanks began heading toward al-Boukamal on the Iraqi border on Tuesday, activists and residents said, but hadn’t advanced into the province as of Thursday.
Protesters hold a child up during a demonstration against President Bashar al-Assad in Deir el-Zour, Syria, on Thursday.
Protesters hold a child up during a demonstration against President Bashar al-Assad in Deir el-Zour, Syria, on Thursday.
Unrest in Syria
Despite the rising death toll from weeks of unrest, people across Syria continue to protest the government of President Bashar al-Assad. See events by day.
Meanwhile, in a sign of the growing pressure on President Bashar al-Assad’s regime to respond to protests, Rami Makhlouf—a first cousin of the president who is considered Syria’s wealthiest businessman—announced late Thursday he would sell his shares in the telecom company SyriaTel and relinquish his real-estate properties to the state.
Mr. Makhlouf, who monopolizes business life in Syria, has been a symbol of corruption for the anti-government protesters, who have chanted slogans against him. Mr. Makhlouf is among members of Mr. Assad’s regime sanctioned by the U.S. and European Union for his role in the protest crackdown.
“I will not allow myself to be a burden on Syria, its people, or its president,” Mr. Makhlouf said in a televised news conference. He said he was responding to rumors by “conspirators” aiming to spread chaos in Syria, maintaining the government’s line that the uprising is instigated by Islamists and foreign agents bent on destroying the country. The move, however, was widely seen as a means for the president to relieve himself of protest targets.
Syria’s military already is spread across the vast northwestern area bordering Turkey, and has remained deployed in its southern region, where protests started in Deraa in mid-April. A military campaign against the western town of Tal Kalakh last month sent thousands of Syrians fleeing into Lebanon. A similar scenario unfolded on the border with Turkey last week, which now hosts at least 8,900 Syrian refugees.
via Syrian Forces Spread to New Area Near Iraq Border – WSJ.com.
Syrian refugees protest against President Bashar Assad, in a camp in Yayladagi, Turkey, near the Syrian border, Wednesday, June 15, 2011. Syria’s government is calling for the return of thousands of refugees who fled to Turkey to escape violence in northern Syria. Syrian Information Minister Adnan Mahmoud says security, electricity, water and communications have now been restored in Jisr al-Shughour and the area is now safe. Some 8,000 Syrians have sought refuge in camps in neighboring Turkey following a military crackdown that authorities said was to snuff out “armed terrorists” in the region.
via PhotoBlog – Syrians protest the regime in Turkey while others show their support in Damascus.
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Turkey says Angelina Jolie can visit Syrian refugees who have fled violence and are camped out on the Turkish side of the border.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Selcuk Unal said Wednesday the Hollywood celebrity and goodwill ambassador for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees might arrive in Turkey on Friday, but that the date remains uncertain.
Unal said Turkey granted permission to visit after assessing an application submitted on Jolie’s behalf.
At least 8,000 Syrians have fled to Turkey to escape a crackdown on an anti-government uprising.
In April, Jolie traveled to Tunisia during its refugee crisis as thousands fled from its war-torn neighbor, Libya.
via Turkey: Jolie can visit Syrian refugees | The Associated Press | News | Washington Examiner.
