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Violence in Syrian border province leaves 28 dead
BEIRUT: Syrian security forces fired on a funeral procession in a restive northwestern border region, killing two people and raising Tuesday's death toll to at least 28, activists said.The flare-up of violence in Idlib province highlighted how Syria's uprising, which earlier this year involved mostly peaceful demonstrations in small towns and cities, has become a virtual insurgency in the countryside along the Turkish border. Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and other Syrian activists said thousands of people were taking part in the funeral in the city of Idlib of civilians killed there earlier in the day when the gunfire erupted. Regime forces swept through villages in the area near the Turkish frontier and attacked infiltrators at the border, and anti-regime fighters staged a retaliatory ambush and assassinated a senior officer earlier Tuesday, the reports and Syrian media said. Military defectors known as the Free Syrian Army have found shelter alongside thousands of Syrian refugees on the Turkish side, making use of mountainous terrain, local smuggling networks and support among villagers on the Syrian side to stage cross-border attacks. President Bashar Assad's forces have responded with stepped-up border patrols and reprisal raids on villages where anti-regime protests have been frequent. The deadliest incident in the past two days took place in two villages near the Turkish border early Tuesday, after security forces entered and shot two civilians dead, said Rami Abdul-Rahman of the British-based Syrian Observation Center. Residents of Maaret Musreen and Kfar Bahmoul responded by closing a main road to the Syrian troops, who then opened fire at random, he said, killing 11 civilians died and wounding 26. The observatory said security forces also killed three other people in the provincial capital of Idlib and two in the central province of Homs. The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, gave a similar death toll. Later in the morning, army defectors retaliated by attacking a security convoy in the nearby town of Bab el-Hawa, killing seven troops, Abdul-Rahman said. Syria's state media, for its part, reported that border guards intercepted 15 gunmen trying to infiltrate from Turkey on Monday night. It said two were killed in the ensuing firefight and others were injured. It was the second such infiltration attempt from Turkey in a week. SANA also reported that "armed terrorists" -- its usual term for regime opponents -- shot and killed Brig. Gen. Ghanem Ibrahim Al-Hassan, who teaches at the Assad Military Engineering Academy in the town of Saraqeb in Idlib. Posted by: Steve White 2011-12-14 |
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