Turkey’s top military commander on Wednesday warned of a stronger response if Syrian shells continue to land on Turkish soil, as Syria’s army launched a new onslaught against rebels in besieged Homs city.
President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, on the back foot with rebels controlling swathes of north Syria and defying months of army offensives to push them out of key cities, sent reinforcements to a strategic northern town captured by the insurgents on Tuesday, a watchdog said.
“We have retaliated (for Syrian shelling) and if it continues, we’ll respond more strongly,” the head of Turkey’s armed forces, General Necdet Ozel, said in Akcakale, a border town where five civilians were killed by Syrian shelling last week.
The military chief was inspecting troops on a tour of the heavily fortified border region where a number of shells fired from Syria have fallen, prompting fears of an escalation of the conflict.
Following the deadly shelling in Akcakale last Wednesday, the Turkish parliament approved the use of military force if necessary against one-time ally Syria.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also warned Damascus not to test Turkey’s patience and vowed Ankara would not tolerate such acts.
NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen has warned against escalation along the frontier and said the alliance has “all necessary plans in place to protect and to defend Turkey if necessary.”
The sabre-rattling on the frontier added to growing fears of a wider regional fallout of the conflict ravaging Syria, in which according to activists more than 32,000 people have died, mostly civilians.
Residents of the Old City neighbourhood of Homs, meanwhile, desperately pleaded for humanitarian assistance as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported heavy shelling of rebel belts across the city in central Syria and the nearby town of Qusayr, both besieged for months.
The army this week vowed to overrun both Homs and Qusayr by the end of the week to free up troops for battle zones in the north, such as Aleppo.
The fresh offensive has sent a new flood of refugees across the border into Lebanon, said a Lebanese security official who noted up to 400 people had crossed the frontier in a 24-hour period.
An activist in the Homs Old City, reached via Skype on Wednesday, said the district was “totally surrounded.”
“There is no way out. Our situation is so bad it makes anyone cry,” said the activist, who identified himself as Abu Bilal.
“The field hospitals are full of injured people needing operations and who need to be evacuated. There is no way out at all.”
The Old City neighbourhood of Homs has been under total siege by the army for more than four months.
The Observatory says thousands of civilians remain trapped in the Old City and other besieged, rebel-held districts of the city rebels refer to as “the capital of the revolution.”
“We call on the International Committee of the Red Cross, and on the Red Crescent, to come to our assistance,” said Abu Bilal.
In Qusayr, the situation was “terrible” overnight, activist Hadi al-Abdallah told AFP via Skype.
“People are afraid of what might happen if the army enters into the rebel-held areas of Qusayr. They say they would prefer to die in the shelling than be executed by the army,” said Abdallah.
Qusayr has been in rebel hands — and under siege — since September last year. The Observatory says thousands of people are trapped in the town, and that the only way out is via secret tunnels.
“There is no way out for anyone here,” said Abdallah.
The Observatory also reported heavy shelling on Wednesday against a string of rebel-held neighbourhoods in Aleppo, which has been the theatre since mid-July of an increasingly bloody battle between rebels and the army. The Britain-based watchdog, which collates information from a network of activists and medics on the ground, added that on Tuesday alone 22 civilians died in a shelling blitz against Aleppo.
Army efforts to reinforce Aleppo have been dealt a blow by the capture on Tuesday by rebels of Maaret al-Numan, a strategic town in the northwestern province of Idlib on the highway linking Damascus to Aleppo.
