Turkish troops kill civilian trying to cross into Syria

        
Turkish security forces killed a civilian when they returned fire on a group of people trying to cross illegally from Turkey into Syria, the Turkish military said on Tuesday, as tensions increase along the border.

The group of eight civilians had been trying to cross from the Turkish Hatay province into northwestern Syria on Monday afternoon and opened fire on the Turkish border patrol after the troops had sounded an audible warning, it said.

The troops returned fire in line with their rules of engagement, killing one of the civilians.

Meanwhile, activists said an al-Qaeda-linked group has warned civilians not to use a road linking central Syria with the northern province of Aleppo, declaring it a military zone.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Aleppo Media Center said that Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front, is threatening to target any vehicle using the road starting Wednesday. A copy of the warning was posted online.

Activists have reported heavy fighting near the road, which links the central province of Hama with the embattled city of Aleppo.

The regime uses the route to ferry supplies to its forces in the north because the rebels already have severed the main north-south highway that connects Damascus with Aleppo.

This as officials said Monday that President Barack Obama will move forward with a plan for the United States to arm the struggling Syrian rebels after some congressional concerns were eased.

The White House announced in June that it would offer military aid to vetted groups of Syrian rebels after two years of balking at directly sending arms to the opposition.

But both Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees had expressed worries that the arms could end up in the hands of Islamist militants in Syria like the Nusra Front, and would not be enough to tip the balance of the civil war against President Bashar al-Assad anyway.

REBELS LAGGING

The mostly Sunni Muslim rebels have been struggling since government forces, helped by Lebanese Hezbollah allies, took the strategic town of Qusayr in early June. Backed by warplanes and artillery, Assad is much better armed than the rebels.

Obama has been reluctant to intervene in the civil war in Syria, in which more than 100,000 people have died.

"Arms do not make peace," said Lakhdar Brahimi, the special peace envoy for Syria of the United Nations and the Arab League. "We would like to see the delivery of arms stopped to all sides," he told reporters in Washington.


REUTERS/AP