Turkey to close all Syrian border gates as 150 observers leave Syria...

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Syria sent thousands of troops surging towards Aleppo in the early hours of Wednesday, where its forces have been pounding rebel fighters from the air, engulfing the country's largest city in total warfare to put down a revolt.

Syrian forces fired artillery and rocket barrages early on Wednesday at the northern Damascus suburb of al-Tel in an attempt to seize the town from rebels, causing mass panic and forcing hundreds of families to flee the area, residents and opposition activists said.

Syria's envoy to Cyprus Lamia al-Hariri as well as Syria’s ambassador to the UAE have defected and are now in Qatar, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) said on Wednesday.

Meanwhile,Turkey's border gates with Syria are to be closed on Wednesday, Turkish Customs and Trade Minister Hayati Yazici was reported as saying by broadcaster NTV.

In this context, the UNHCR said Turkey has told it that border crossings with Syria will close to all commercial traffic but will remain open to Syrian refugees.

The move comes after Syrian rebels seized control of several border gates along the frontier with Turkey in their 16-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

Meanwhile, 150 observers have left Syria on Wednesday in line with a decision to reduce their number by half.

International positions:

As for international positions, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told the state-owned Itar-Tass news agency that Moscow has received "firm assurances" from Damascus that its Syrian chemical arsenal is "fully safeguarded".

Russia on Wednesday said fresh European Union sanctions against Syria were "counterproductive" and said it would not recognise measures it viewed as a de-facto blockade of the country.

The Foreign Ministry expressed dismay over measures requiring EU member states to inspect sea and air cargoes headed for Syria from third countries if they suspect weapons may be on board.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the United States of justifying terrorism against the Syrian government and berated Western nations he said had not condemned attacks that killed top members of Syrian President Bashar Assad's inner circle.

Russia has told the Syrian government clearly that it is unacceptable to threaten to use chemical weapons, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday in its strongest condemnation of a recent warning by a Syrian official.

In a meeting with Syria's ambassador to Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov "laid out in an extremely clear form Russia's position on the inadmissibility of any threats of the use of chemical weapons", he ministry said.

Referring to what he said were comments by U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland indicating such attacks were not surprising given the Syrian government's conduct, Lavrov said, "This is a direct justification of terrorism."

Separately, Israel's foreign minister said Israel will act immediately if it discovers Lebanese Hezbollah militants are raiding Syria's chemical or biological weapons stocks.

Avigdor Lieberman told Israel Radio on Wednesday: "For us, that's a casus belli, a red line."

As for the US, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that it is the moral duty of the US to deter any regime from committing a “genocide” against its people.

REUTERS/LBCI