Syria army takes pounding as Turkey tensions rise

DAMASCUS: The army took a pounding at the hands of rebels in northern Syria, a watchdog said on Friday, as tensions between Damascus and Ankara escalated over cargo seized from a Syrian passenger plane.
A rebel offensive killed more than 100 soldiers in two days, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, including 14 soldiers in an attack on an army post in southern Daraa province and two others elsewhere.
The latest military fatalities were among 56 people killed nationwide on Friday, including 20 civilians, the watchdog said.
On Thursday alone the army suffered 92 losses — its highest daily total in the 19-month conflict.
With an average of 20 deaths per day, the army has lost about 10,000 soldiers, with at least an equal number wounded, a military hospital official told AFP, updating a toll of 8,000 he supplied in August.
As fighting raged on the ground, a war of words between Syria and Turkey grew angrier after Ankara said military supplies were aboard an airliner it intercepted en route between Moscow and Damascus.
And Turkey scrambled a fighter jet on Friday after a Syrian helicopter attacked the rebel-held town of Azmarin near the border, an official in Ankara told AFP.
The Syrian foreign ministry accused Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan of lying when he said the jet intercepted on Wednesday was carrying “equipment and ammunition shipped to the Syrian defense ministry” from a Russian military supplier.
Sergei Lavrov, Moscow’s foreign minister of Syria’s ally, also hit back at Turkey saying the cargo was legal, in Russia’s first remarks about the incident.
“This cargo is electrical technical equipment for radar stations, this is dual-purpose equipment but is not forbidden by any international conventions,” Lavrov said.
Turkey’s allies have warned of the risks embedded in the Syria conflict between the neighbors, which have exchanged cross-border fire amid fears that the civil war could spark a regional conflagration.
Amid the growing alarm, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle was due in NATO partner Turkey on Saturday for talks with his counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu on “the situation in Syria and on the Turkish-Syria border.”
“It is important that no one pours oil on the fire. We are counting on moderation and de-escalation,” said Westerwelle.
On his second regional tour, UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is also due in Istanbul on Saturday after talks in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah with King Abdullah on Friday.
The Observatory said Thursday was one of the deadliest days since the anti-regime revolt erupted in March last year, with at least 240 people killed nationwide, including the 92 soldiers.
Of those soldiers, 36 died in the northern province of Idlib, where many of the fiercest clashes have taken place over the past three months, it said.
On Friday, regime warplanes attacked two buildings in the Idlib town of Maaret Al-Numan, where intense fighting has raged since rebels overran it on Tuesday after a fierce 48-hour battle, said the Britain-based watchdog.
Analysts put the military’s setbacks in the north down to a lack of supplies and the rebels opening numerous battlefronts.
Resupplying the army is “a fundamental aspect of the performance of the military,” said Emile Hokayem, Middle East expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
But he added that the army’s air supremacy was no longer decisive because the troops have “lost morale.”
Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman added: “The regular army is fighting in hundreds of places. Before, the battle was concentrated in Homs (center), but today it has reached Aleppo (north), the coast, the Turkish border areas and the provinces of Damascus and Deir Ezzor (east).”
An AFP reporter said the rebels, by seizing a stretch of highway near Maaret Al-Numan, were able to cut the route linking Damascus to embattled commercial hub Aleppo on Thursday, choking the flow of troops to the north.
Rebels on Friday also attacked a large air force post on the highway connecting Aleppo to Raqa province, further to the east, near Kweris military airport, the Observatory said.
“The rebels attacked the air force battalion after midnight and the clashes went on until dawn, but the rebels definitely did not gain control of the post,” Abdel Rahman told AFP.
Despite the ongoing violence, anti-regime demonstrations were held across Syria after the weekly Muslim prayers.
In Aleppo, regime forces fired on protesters in the Halab Al-Jadida district, wounding a number of demonstrators, the Observatory said.
Meanwhile shopkeeper Murad Hakura, 32, gave a chilling account of how he survived a “massacre” of detainees by troops in Maaret Al-Numan on Monday.
“I curled up on the floor and two bodies fell on top of me. I felt their blood seep onto me, heard their prayers and their final groans,” he said.
According to Observatory figures, more than 32,000 people have died in Syria since the revolt erupted on March 15, 2012.