A top United Nations human rights investigator has been holding talks in Damascus with senior Syrian officials to pave the way for a U.N. probe into widespread violations in the country, including recent massacres, U.N. and diplomatic sources said on Monday.
It was the first time that Brazilian expert Paulo Pinheiro was granted permission to enter Syria since his team was set up last September by the U.N. Human Rights Council.
"He is trying to pave the way for us to be able to go into the country," a U.N. source told Reuters in Geneva. "We need to go before September when our final report is to be submitted."
Separately, European diplomatic sources earlier reported a possible
new aerial accident between Turkey and Syria over the Mediterranean Sea, with
no report of victims and damages.
The news comes following a recent downing of a
Turkish military jet last Friday.
According to the sources, the Syrian air defense system detected a military
search-and-rescue plane belonging to the Turkish military, and took it as a “potential
target”, which is the last phase before opening fire.
Meanwhile, Syrian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Jihad Makdissi announced on Monday that the Turkish jet entering the Syrian airspace was “a
clear breach of the Syrian sovereignty”.
"The Air Defense crew had to react immediately
to a plane flying fast at 100 meters altitude, “even if the plane was Syrian we
would have shot it down,” he added during a press conference.
"The Turkish jet was shot down with anti-aircraft
gun, not radar-guided missiles," he confirmed.
Earlier in the day, Turkey's state-run news agency reported that 33 more members of the Syrian military have defected to Turkey with their families at a time of heightened tensions between the two countries over Syria's downing of a Turkish plane.
The Anadolu Agency said Monday that the group, which includes a general and two colonels, crossed into Turkey overnight. They were being hosted at a refugee camp near the border.
Thousands of soldiers have abandoned the regime, but most are low-level conscripts. The Free Syria Army the loosely linked group of rebel forces is made up largely of defectors.
Meanwhile, the ICRC Chief said on Monday that the International
Committee of the Red Cross has taken steps to seek access to Syrian town of
Homs but needs unambiguous agreement of both sides.
“ICRC must assess risks for staff to enter Homs as there are real
security concerns, including booby traps”, he added.
Monday morning witnessed the resumption of violence
across several Syrian towns and cities. Syrian tanks and artillery shelled the eastern
city of Deir
al-Zor, killing at least 20 people in the second day of heavy bombardment in
the country's main oil-producing region, opposition activists said.
"Regime forces have
dismantled their roadblocks from inside of Deir al-Zor after incurring heavy
losses from rebels. They have withdrawn from residential areas and are now
shelling the city from the outskirts. The victims are mostly civilians," a
source at a hospital in Deir al-Zor told Reuters.
The official state news agency said
"terrorists" abducted a state-appointed head of clerics in Deir
al-Zor and blew up an oil pipeline passing through the province.
The
Syrian Network for Human Rights, an opposition activists' organization that
monitors the crackdown on the 16-month revolt against Assad's rule, said
loyalist forces on Sunday killed another 70 people, mostly civilians and
soldiers who had tried to defect, elsewhere in the country in shelling,
military raids and summary executions in the provinces of Homs, Hama, Idlib,
Deraa and suburbs of Damascus.
For its part, the
Syrian National Council sent out a distress call – citing that International
Forces should come to the rescue before another massacre takes place. This as
several videos surfaced on YouTube depicting heavy fighting and bombardment of
the city of Talbiseh.
Separately,
and in regards to downed Turkish jet in Syria, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius described the incident as “unacceptable."
Meanwhile, a European source said that the EU will be adopting new sanctions against Syria.
REUTERS/LBCI