Violence rages in Syria on eve of deadline for cease-fire plan
Government forces continue to fire on rebels, shooting across Turkish, Lebanese borders. Analysts are doubtful about peace plan.
REYHANLI, Turkey — Violence in Syria and at its borders continued to rage Monday on the eve of a cease-fire that analysts said they doubted would be agreed to by President Bashar Assad.
“The Syrian government is in a race against time to basically crush the armed wing of the uprising and have the upper hand in any political negotiations,” said Fawaz Gerges, director of the Middle East Center, London School of Economics.
“The Assad regime and the rebels have locked themselves into a protracted and bloody conflict. Both camps are planning for the long term,” he said.
Syrian forces fired across the border into a refugee camp in Turkey, wounding five people, authorities said. The soldiers were firing at rebels who tried to escape after ambushing a mil- itary checkpoint, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. On the border with Lebanon, a cameraman for Lebanon’s Al Jadeed TV station was killed by shots fired from Syria, the station said.
Turkey shelters thousands of refugees fleeing Assad’s military, which has killed 9,000 people since March 2011 in an attempt to put down an uprising, according to the United Nations.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry demanded Syria stop shooting across the border, saying that the refugees “are under the full protection of Turkey.”
Former Syrian secret police operative Zakaria Mohammed walked for three days from Dier al Zour to get here this weekend, he said. He deserted after regime troops arrived and began indiscriminately killing civilians and members of their own ranks who hesitated to follow orders.
“They call it the security solution,” he said. “But it’s inhumane. They have been stripped of every sense of humanity. They’ll take a whole family to prison and torture them.”
The United Nations and Arab League offered a peace plan through former U.N. chief Kofi Annan that called for Syrian forces to withdraw from urban areas.
The plan appeared dead after Assad insisted Sunday on written guarantees from rebel fighters that they lay down their weapons. The Free Syrian Army said it would honor a truce but refused to recognize the legitimacy of the regime.
“The escalating of the crimes, the massacres every day and now the killing of three Syrian refugees across the border with Turkey is a clear sign that the regime will not stop the killing,” said Radwan Ziadeh of the Syrian National Council.
Human Rights Watch said it has documented the killings by Syrian forces of 85 civilians, in- cluding women and children, and the executions of at least 16 wounded or captured opposition fighters. The group said it only included cases corroborated by witnesses.
“Who can accept a regime that killed their sister, raped their mother, imprisoned their brother and committed massacres against their fathers?” asked Sami Ibrahim, an activist with the Syrian Network for Human Rights in Homs.
Many say they couldn’t stop opposing the regime now if they wanted. “The cost of stopping is a hundred times the cost of continuing,” Ibrahim said. “If they stop, this regime will follow them.”
Nearly 25,000 Syrians are in Turkey in eight separate Turkish Red Crescent camps sprinkled along the Syrian-turkish border, which continue to receive daily arrivals of men, women and children who cross the mountains for Turkey.
The number of refugees has grown by almost 10,000 since mid-march, including a surge Thursday that saw 2,800 people arrive in a single day, according to the Turkish Foreign Ministry. Inside the Reyhanli refugee camp, about 1,000 refugees live in Red Crescent tents. There’s food, electricity and even a playground for children who scamper within view of the barbed wire frontier and rocky hills that divide the two countries.
Abdullah Kontar, 39, of Hama, uses his tent as an information hub with cellphones ringing every three or four minutes with new reports of clashes from across the border.
Three months ago, when his younger brother was taken away by police, he knew it was time to leave.
“Sometimes they don’t kill you — they make you wish you were dead,” he said of the feared secret police. It is that brutality, says ex-secret police officer Mohammed, that makes it impossible for Assad to accept the U.N. peace plan.
“Assad will not fulfill his promise to withdraw the army and tanks because if he does so, within 24 hours he will fall,” he said. “All the people will rise.”