Northern Front - Turkish borders
A Turkish soldier was wounded in
a clash with gunmen in a group of about 500 people trying to cross into Turkey
from Syria, the Turkish military said on Thursday.
It said troops in Hatay province fired
across the border on Wednesday after coming under fire themselves from the
gunmen who had believed the soldiers would prevent the party from crossing.
The Turkish soldier, wounded in the knee,
was the first such
casualty in several similar border incidents
in the past week.
Southern Front - Golan Heights
Earlier, rebels seized a border crossing
on the demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria, activists said,
as heavy clashes raged between the opposition and President Bashar al-Assad's
forces.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights said it was the first time that rebels had seized a border
crossing next to the Israeli occupied Golan Heights, but it was unclear whether
the anti-Assad fighters would be able to hold the site.
Israel is worried that the Golan, which it
captured from Syria in 1967, will become a springboard for attacks on Israelis
by jihadi fighters, who are taking part in the armed struggle against Assad.
"The rebels have seized the crossing
near the old city of Quneitra in the occupied Golan Heights," said Rami
Abdelrahman, head of the Observatory. "There are heavy explosions and
fierce clashing ongoing in the area."
Eastern Bweida
The Syrian army shelled on Thursday the town of Bweida to which
rebels and civilians fled after being evacuated on Wednesday from the strategic
border town of Qusayr, the Observatory said.
"The army is using missiles to bombard Eastern
Bweida," where hundreds of civilians and injured people who escaped from
nearby Qusayr have sought refuge, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
This comes in light of the capture of Syria's al-Qusayr by the Syrian
army on Wednesday after a grueling three-week battle,
handing a heavy defeat to rebels and solidifying a shift in the country's civil
war in favor of President Bashar Assad's regime.
The blow to the rebel movement could also further discourage it from entering peace negotiations with the regime,
which the United States and Russia have been trying to put together in Geneva.
Positions:
Israel said on Thursday it regrets Austria's decision to withdraw its peacekeepers from a U.N. force in the Golan Heights and hopes the move will not lead to further escalation of conflict along the Syrian frontier.
"While appreciating Austria's longtime contribution and commitment to peacekeeping in the Middle East, we nevertheless regret this decision and hope that it will not be conducive to further escalation in the region," the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
"Israel expects the United Nations to uphold its commitment under Security Council Resolution 350 (1974), in virtue of which UNDOF has been established," the statement said.
Earlier, the Austrian governement said it will withdraw its
peacekeepers from the UN monitoring force on the Golan Heights given worsening
fighting between Syrian government forces and rebels.
Austrians account for about 380 of the
1,000-strong UN force monitoring a ceasefire between Syria and Israel and their
departure will deal a serious blow to the mission.
On the other hand, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that reports chemical weapons have being used in Syria should not be used to justify foreign military intervention in the more than two-year-old conflict.
"The issue of chemical weapons has become the subject of speculation and provocation," Lavrov said after meeting with counterparts from Baltic nations. "I do not rule out that somebody wants to use it to state that a red line has been crossed and a foreign intervention is necessary."
In turn, Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri urged Syrians to unite to bring down
President Bashar al-Assad and thwart what he said were U.S. plans to set
up a client state in Syria to safeguard Israel's security.
Earlier,
the White House condemned the Syrian regime's capture of a strategic
border town and said the involvement of Lebanese Hezbollah threatens
Lebanon's stability.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said
Assad's regime clearly couldn't wrest control of Qusayr alone and had to
rely on help from Iranian-backed Hezbollah. Carney said Syria's
government must allow the U.N. and others to evacuate Qusayr's wounded
and provide medical treatment.
Carney also noted that the Syrian
regime blatantly violated Lebanon's sovereignty by mounting a
cross-border attack Wednesday on a mainly Sunni town in Lebanon near the
Syrian border.
For their part, Arab League ministers condemned
the escalating situation in Syria and called for a political solution as
a way out of the crisis.
A draft resolution issued after the
meeting in Egyptian capital of Cairo included a list of steps which, it
said, were needed to end the civil war. One included the deployment of a
United Nations peacekeeping force.
During the meeting, Egypt's Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr warned that the Syrian state is "on the verge of collapse."
AP/REUTERS/LBCI
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