NATO said on Sunday it will discuss Turkey’s accusation that Syria shot down one of its warplanes in international airspace, as Damascus suffered heavy losses and violence scaled new heights.
Syria’s surging bloodshed saw at least 72 people killed, a bulk of them regime troops who died in clashes with rebels, activists said. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu warned Ankara’s southern neighbour not to challenge Turkey’s military, as Britain, another member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, offered support for “robust” international action. “According to our conclusions, our plane was shot down in international airspace, 13 nautical miles from Syria,” Davutoglu told Turkey’s TRT television. “The Syrians knew full well that it was a Turkish military plane and the nature of its mission,” he said. “Nobody should dare put Turkey’s (military) capabilities to the test.” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lashed out at Syria for the “brazen and unacceptable” shooting down of the Turkish jet and vowed to work with Ankara on a suitable response. “It is yet another reflection of the Syrian authorities’ callous disregard for international norms, human life, and peace and security,” Clinton said in a written statement. British Foreign Secretary William Hague said regime of President Bashar al-Assad “should not make the mistake of believing that it can act with impunity. It will be held to account for its behaviour”.
Italy, another NATO member, also condemned the regime for the shooting incident. “This is … extremely serious and unacceptable,” Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi said. He added that Rome voiced its “strong indignation and condemnation” and that Italy would “actively participate” in the NATO meeting, which is to be held on Tuesday. A NATO spokeswoman said that “under Article 4, any ally can request consultations whenever, in the opinion of any of them, their territorial integrity, political independence or security is threatened”. Damascus said it downed the F-4 Phantom on Friday after it violated Syrian airspace. Turkey had acknowledged on Saturday that the plane may have done so, in comments seen as a bid to cool tensions between the former allies, but it now appears to have taken a harder stance.
“Syria was merely exercising its right and sovereign duty and defence,” Syrian foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi was quoted as saying on Sunday in Al-Watan, a pro-government daily. “There is no enmity between Syria and Turkey, but political tension (exists) between the two countries. What happened was an accident and not an assault as some like to say, because the plane was shot while it was in Syrian airspace and flew over Syrian territorial waters,” Makdissi said. CNN-Turk television reported that search and rescue teams had located the wreckage of the jet at a depth of 1,300 metres (yards) in the sea, but did not give its precise location or refer to the fate of the two missing pilots. Ankara said it could not confirm the report. Turkey-Syria relations have already been strained by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s outspoken condemnation of the Assad’s regime’s bloody crackdown, which rights activists say has killed more than 15,000 people since March 2011. At least 72 people were killed on Sunday in Syria, including 36 civilians, 27 soldiers and nine rebels, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. At least 16 soldiers were killed in the northern province of Aleppo, while the rest died in neighbouring Idlib province and in the provinces of Damascus and Deir Ezzor in the east, the watchdog said. The Observatory reported that following an attack on an artillery battalion also in Aleppo, a number of soldiers defected, taking with them a large quantity of weapons. The official SANA news agency reported that regime troops “were engaged in combat against a terrorist group that attacked people in the Jabaliye neighbourhood of Deir Ezzor killing scores of terrorists”. Syrian government uses the term “terrorists” to describe the rebels. In another setback for the regime, rebels captured 11 government soldiers in the central province of Damascus, it added.
