Turkey ordered a Syrian passenger plane en route from Moscow to land in
Ankara on Wednesday, scrambling fighter planes to escort the aircraft
down, state-run TRT television said.
A foreign ministry official confirmed that a civilian plane had been
ordered to land in the Turkish capital but gave no further details.
Turkey received intelligence that a Syrian passenger plane which it forced to land in Ankara on Wednesday was carrying "non-civilian cargo", Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.
Speaking live on Turkish television, Davutoglu said Turkey was within its rights under international law to investigate civilian planes suspected to be carrying military materials.
Turkey's military will respond with greater force if shelling from Syria continues to hit its territory, its chief of staff said on Wednesday, as clashes between the Syrian army and rebels intensified along the border.
Several mortar bombs landed outside the Syrian border town of Azmarin early on Wednesday and heavy machinegun fire could be heard from the Turkish side. Plumes of smoke rose into the sky and cries of "God is greatest" rang out between the bursts of gunfire, a Reuters witness said.
Turkey's armed forces have bolstered their presence along the 900-km (560-mile) border and have been responding in kind over the past week to gunfire and shelling coming across from northern Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad's forces have been battling rebels who control swathes of territory.
"We responded but if it continues we will respond with greater force," state television TRT quoted Turkey's Chief of Staff, General Necdet Ozel, as saying.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Tuesday the 28-member military alliance had plans in place to defend Turkey. He gave no further details, but a senior U.S. defence official said NATO would likely react if Turkey made a request for assistance.
It is not clear whether the shells that have hit Turkish territory were aimed to strike there or were due to Syrian troops overshooting as they attacked rebel positions.
Meanwhile, UN Secretary
General’s Spokesperson announced that the organization is “extremely concerned
with the exploitation of new installations and medical vehicles” in the
commission of acts of violence across Syria.
This as the
New York Times
reported that the US has sent a special military force to Jordan to aid the
kingdom cope with the influx of Syrian refugees and prepare for scenarios which
include the loss of control of chemical weapons in Damascus.
For his part, the Syrian Foreign
ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi revealed, in a statement, that his country asked
the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to send envoys to the countries which are
funding, sheltering, training and arming the armed groups, so that they show commitment
to halt these actions, mentioning among these countries Saudi Arabi, Qatar and
Turkey.
On the Ground:
The British based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that opposition groups gained control over the city of Maarat Nehman. This as regime forces are said to be sending reinforcement towards the city for its "strategic importance."
While the Syrian Observatory reported intensive
shelling over rebel-held streets in the city of Homs, "Al-Watan
al-Souriyya" Daily said that the Syrian Army is intending to launch a
final attack against the city, which will be declared, in the few coming hours,
as a "safe province".
For its part, SANA said the Syrian army had carried out an operation against a terrorist cell in the city of Aleppo, destroying cars equipped with machine guns and other weaponry.
This as scores of Syrian civilians, many of them women with screaming children clinging to their necks, crossed a narrow river marking the border with Turkey as they fled the fighting in Azmarin and surrounding villages.
Residents from the Turkish village of Hacipasa, nestled among olive groves, helped pull them across in small metal boats.
"The firing started getting intense last night. Some people have been killed, some are lying wounded on the road," said a 55-year old woman, Mune, who fled Azmarin and sat with several adults and about 20 children outside a house in Hacipasa.
"People want to escape but they can't. Many have settled in a field outside the town and are trying to come," she said, describing how she had helped ferry the children over another point in the river in a metal bowl used for wheat.
Doctors and volunteers set up makeshift first aid points on both sides of the frontier. A Turkish ambulance and several minibuses and cars waited to take the more seriously wounded to the main city of Antakya or district hospitals.
"Don't take me across, take me back. I want to return and fight," said one man being carried on a stretcher, his T-shirt stained with blood.
The sharp rise in casualties in Syria in the past month indicates the growing intensity of the conflict, which developed from peaceful protests against Assad in March 2011 into a full-scale civil war.
An estimated 30,000 people have been killed as main cities such as Aleppo, Homs and the capital Damascus are savagely contested.
REUTERS/LBCI
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