Members
of the Free Syrian army claimed on Saturday that they have destroyed 12
MIG planes and at least 17 helicopters during a dawn raid on a Syrian
Air force facility in Idlib, a city located north of Aleppo.
They claimed that during the attack, several surface to air missiles
were also seized, but didn’t not state whether any airmen were killed
in the raid.To counter the claims, the Syrian state media said that
re-inforcements were being rushed to milit force the rebels to flee. On
Saturday’s fighting according to reports more than 60 people have been
killed. But the casualty figures could not be verified from independent
sources. The state media quoting military sources stated that helicopter
gunships that were rushed to Idlib area inflicted heavy damages to the
rebels.
Stockpic
In the meantime, rebels posted a video on Saturday showing rebels
capturing ground to air missiles in the same region from a militart
facility.
Meanwhile Reuters filed the report below…
The Syrian Free Army (FSA) seized an air defense facility and
attacked a military airport in eastern Syria on Saturday, a monitoring
group said, hitting back at an air force which President Bashar al-Assad
is increasingly relying on to crush his opponents.
The attacks in eastern oil-producing Deir al-Zor province follow
rebel strikes against military airports in the Aleppo and Idlib areas,
close to the border with Turkey.
Assad, battling a 17-month-old uprising in which 20,000 people have
been killed, has lost control of rural areas in northern, eastern and
southern regions and has resorted to helicopter gunships and fighter
jets to subdue his foes.
The aerial bombardment has driven fresh waves of refugees into
neighboring countries, reviving Turkish calls for “safe zones” to be set
up on Syrian territory – appeals ignored by a divided U.N. Security
Council and by Western powers reluctant to commit the military forces
needed to secure such zones.
Opposition fighters in Deir al-Zor overran an air defense building,
taking at least 16 captives and seizing an unknown number of
anti-aircraft rockets, said Rami Abdulrahman of the British-based Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights.
Video posted on the Internet by activists showed the officers and
soldiers captured by the rebel fighters as well as an arsenal of
rocket-propelled grenades and heavy ammunition seized in the raid.
Razan Qassis was killed due to army shelling.
Abdulrahman said the opposition fighters also attacked the Hamdan
military airbase at Albu Kamal, close to Syria’s eastern border with
Iraq, but did not succeed in breaking into it.
The attacks come three days after opposition fighters said they had
damaged several helicopters at the Taftanaz air base in Idlib province.
The insurgents also said they have shot down a fighter jet and a
helicopter last week.
Air strikes
Assad’s forces have made numerous air strikes on civilians in
rebel-held areas. Helicopters have strafed towns with heavy machineguns,
and jets have unleashed rockets and bombs against opposition
strongholds.
Bombardments of northern towns such as Azaz and Anadan, of which
Assad lost control weeks ago, have led to thousands of residents fleeing
to safety in Turkey.
Ankara made its call for safe havens inside Syria after the U.N.
refugee agency said the flow of Syrians into Turkey and Jordan – which
already host more than 150,000 registered refugees – was rising sharply.
But a ministerial meeting of the Security Council produced nothing
beyond a French plan to channel more aid to rebel areas, an initiative
which will do nothing to stem the flow of civilians fleeing the
fighting.
Turkish government sources said Ankara would again push for agreement
on safe zones inside Syria at the General Assembly later this month and
would try to put pressure on Russia and Iran, which strongly oppose any
such action.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, a former ally of Assad, showed his frustration at the lack of internationa
l action.
“We cannot take such a measure unless the United Nations Security
Council decides in favour of it … First a decision for the no-fly zone
must be taken, then we would be able to take a step towards a buffer
zone,” Erdogan said in an interview broadcast on Turkish television late
on Friday.
“Bashar al-Assad has come to the end of his political life. At the
moment, Assad is acting in Syria not as a politician, but as an element,
an actor, of war,” he said.
Jordan said on Saturday it was “stretched to the limit” by the influx
of refugees from southern Syria. The resource-poor kingdom of 7 million
has accepted 70,000 registered refugees but says it is hosting 140,000
in local communities.
Planning Minister Jafaar Hassan said the influx was “reaching limits
that the government cannot continue to shoulder”, estimating the cost of
sheltering the refugees at $230 million this year, rising to $285
million in 2013.
Record death toll
A United Nations official said 1,600 people were killed in Syria in
the last week, the highest weekly figure in nearly a year and a half of
conflict, and aid agencies say living conditions are worsening
dramatically.
An estimated 1.2 million people are uprooted within Syria, including
150,000 in Damascus and surrounding areas, according to the United
Nations.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he had pressed the Syrian
government to allow in international aid workers, and received a
positive reply during talks in Tehran this week.
Ban told Reuters he had “long and in-depth discussions with the
Syrian officials” on the sidelines of a Non-Aligned Movement meeting.
“While I criticized all the parties that have been depending on military
means to resolve this issue, the primary responsibility rests with the
Syrian government,” he said.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it would be wrong to press Damascus alone to end the violence.
“It is absolutely unrealistic to say that the unilateral capitulation
of one of the parties in conflict is the only way out, in a situation
when there’s ongoing urban fighting,” he told students of the Moscow
Institute of Foreign Relations.
