Updated on
Summary Turkey warned Wednesday of a tougher response if Syrian shells keep hitting Turkish soil.
President Bashar al-Assads regime, on the back foot with rebels controlling swathes of north Syria and defying months of offensives, sent reinforcements to a strategic northern town captured by the insurgents, a watchdog said.We have retaliated (for Syrian shelling) and if it continues, well respond more strongly, the head of Turkeys armed forces, General Necdet Ozel, said in Akcakale, a border town where five civilians were killed by Syrian shelling last week.The general was inspecting troops on a tour of the heavily fortified border zone where a number of shells fired from Syria have fallen, prompting fears of an escalation of the conflict.Following the deadly shelling in Akcakale last Wednesday, Turkeys parliament approved the use of military force if necessary against one-time ally Syria.Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also warned Damascus not to test Turkeys patience and vowed Ankara would not tolerate such acts.NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen has warned against escalation along the frontier and said the alliance has all necessary plans in place to protect and to defend Turkey if necessary.The sabre-rattling added to growing fears of a wider regional fallout from the conflict ravaging Syria, in which activists say more than 32,000 people have died, mostly civilians.Residents of the Old City neighbourhood of Homs, meanwhile, desperately pleaded for assistance as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported heavy shelling of rebel belts across the central city and nearby town of Qusayr, both besieged for months.The army this week vowed to overrun both Homs and Qusayr by the end of the week to free up troops for northern battle zones like Aleppo.The latest offensive has sent a new flood of refugees across the border into Lebanon, said a Lebanese security official who noted up to 400 people had crossed in a 24-hour period.An activist speaking to AFP over the Internet from Homs said the Old City district was totally surrounded.There is no way out. Our situation is so bad it makes anyone cry, said Abu Bilal. The field hospitals are full of injured people needing operations and who need to be evacuated. There is no way out at all.The Observatory says thousands of civilians remain trapped in the Old City and other rebel-held districts of Homs, which the insurgents call the capital of the revolution.We call on the International Committee of the Red Cross, and on the Red Crescent, to come to our assistance, said Abu Bilal.In Qusayr, the situation was terrible overnight, activist Hadi al-Abdallah told AFP via the Internet.People are afraid of what might happen if the army enters into the rebel-held areas of Qusayr. They say they would prefer to die in the shelling than be executed by the army, said Abdallah.Qusayr has been in rebel hands -- and under siege -- since September last year. The Observatory says thousands of people are trapped in the town, and that the only way out is via secret tunnels.There is no way out for anyone here, said Abdallah.Elsewhere, the army rushed extra troops to Idlib after rebels seized the strategic town of Maaret al-Numan in the northwestern province on Tuesday, the Observatory said.The troops however were intercepted by rebels at the edges of Khan Sheikhun, south of Maaret al-Numan, where fierce clashes broke out even as war planes bombed rebel zones, said Abdel Rahman.If the rebels, who already have Maaret al-Numan and Saraqeb, take Khan Sheikhun, they will completely isolate regime troops in Aleppo because redeployments will not be able to arrive, he added.
