REPORT: Syrian rebels demand response after UN report

Syria's main opposition group on Tuesday demanded a swift international response following the U.N. report confirming the use of chemical weapons in Syria, while Damascus slammed the U.S., British and French foreign ministers, accusing them of trying to impose their agenda on the Syrian people.

The Foreign Ministry statement appeared to be in response to demands by foreign ministers of France, Britain and the U.S. that Syrian President Bashar Assad step down even as the West increases efforts to bring the warring sides to an international peace conference.

The statement comes after the U.N. report was released Monday the first official confirmation by impartial experts that chemical weapons were used in the Aug. 21 attack near Damascus that killed hundreds of people.

The Western-backed Syrian National Coalition said the U.N. report offered "damning and irrefutable evidence" and clearly shows that only the Syrian regime could have carried out the attack last month. U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council when he presented the report that the attack was a "war crime."

The report, he said, was "the most significant confirmed use of chemical weapons against civilians since Saddam Hussein used them" in Halabja, Iran, in 1988, and "the worst use of weapons of mass destruction in the 21st century."

The U.N. inspectors report was careful not to blame either side in the Syrian civil war for the attack. It said surface-to-surface rockets loaded with the nerve agent sarin had been fired from an area where Syria's military has bases, but said the evidence could have been manipulated in the rebel-controlled neighborhood that was struck.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said a report by UN inspectors who investigated an Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack in Syria leaves no doubt about the responsibility of President Bashar al-Assad's government.

For his part, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia still suspects an Aug. 21 poison gas attack in Syria was a provocation by rebel forces and says a report by UN inspectors does not answer all of its questions about the attack. Earlier, China's Foreign Ministry said the government would take a serious look at a report by U.N. investigators which confirmed the use of sarin nerve agent in an Aug. 21 gas attack outside the Syrian capital.

On the Field:

A car bomb exploded on the Syrian side of the main Bab al-Hawa crossing with Turkey on Tuesday and at least a dozen people were taken to nearby hospitals, Syrian opposition activists on the border said. The explosion occurred at a roadblock manned by Islamist brigades at the entrance of the rebel-held crossing, several hundred meters from the Turkish side, they added.

This as the Syrian military accused Turkey of seeking to escalate tensions along the two nations' already volatile border by shooting down a Syrian military helicopter there the day before.

The military said the helicopter was on a mission to monitor for cross-border infiltration of rebels when it "mistakenly" entered Turkish airspace.

Turkey's deputy prime minister Bulent Arinc told reporters in Ankara on Monday that the aircraft was shot down by a fighter jet after it ignored repeated warnings to leave Turkish airspace.

The helicopter had strayed 2 kilometers (more than 1 mile) over Turkey but crashed inside Syria after being hit by missiles fired from the Turkish jet.

Arinc said he did not have any information on the fate of the Syrian pilots. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebel fighters captured one of the two crew members, while the fate of the other was unclear.

The Syrian military said the helicopter entered Turkish space "for a short distance" by mistake. "The hasty reaction from the Turkish side, particularly that the helicopter was heading back and was not on a fighting mission, reveals the real intentions" of Ankara to ramp up tensions, it said.

Turkey has been at odds with the Syrian government since early in the country's civil war and has backed the Syrian rebels, while advocating international intervention in the conflict.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, speaking in Paris after meetings about Syria with his counterparts from other countries, said Monday's incident should send a message.

"Nobody will dare to violate Turkey's borders in any way again," he said, according to Anatolia, the Turkish state-run news agency. "The necessary measures have been taken."

On another note, the U.N.'s Mideast envoy said clashes between Syria's army and rebels on the Golan Heights risk drawing Israel into Syria's civil war.

Robert Serry told the Security Council on Tuesday the fighting could "jeopardize the cease-fire" between Israel and Syria that has been in place since 1974, monitored by U.N peacekeepers.

Serry says that during "heavy clashes" Thursday between Syrian troops and the opposition, five artillery shells and one tank shell landed on the Israeli side of the truce line. Serry says the Israelis did not retaliate. Israel captured most of the Golan Heights in the 1967 Six Day War and has occupied it since.


AP/REUTERS/LBCI


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