Perilous
Times
Syrian army in scorched earth campaign
June 14, 2011 - 1:44AM
AFP
The Syrian army pressed a scorched earth campaign in the northern
mountains on Monday even as state media said two top officials had
been banned from foreign travel in a state probe into their role
in a previous bloody crackdown.
Washington called on President Bashar al-Assad to lead a
transition or leave power, as Western powers expressed mounting
frustration at the failure of the UN Security Council to agree a
resolution condemning his government's crackdown.
Refugees among the thousands who have fled into neighbouring
Turkey said troops were burning crops and slaughtering livestock
in villages near the border.
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State television said the army was pursuing "armed gangs" into the
woods and mountains around Jisr al-Shughur after storming the
protest hotbed at the weekend.
Human rights activists reported heavy gunfire and explosions in
the town throughout Sunday after troops backed by helicopter
gunships and around 200 tanks launched a two-pronged dawn assault.
On Monday, intermittent gunfire was heard as troops launched
search operations in the village of Uram al-Joz, east of Jisr
al-Shughur and in the Jebel al-Zawiya mountains further south, the
activists said.
The majority of the town's 50,000 residents had fled in the
week-long build-up to the crackdown.
More than 6,800 have sought refuge in Turkey, some 40 kilometres
from the town, Turkey's Anatolia news agency reported on Monday.
Britain said that newly re-elected Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan had expressed support for its tabling with European
allies of a UN Security Council draft resolution condemning the
Syrian crackdown.
"Prime Minister Erdogan welcomed the UK's efforts to put pressure
on the regime through a Security Council resolution and they
agreed that Britain and Turkey should work hand in hand to achieve
this," a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said.
The United States is backing the European draft resolution but
veto-wielding Security Council permanent members Russia and China
have so far blocked the draft, and several non-permanent members
have expressed reservations.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said that Washington condemned
the violence being perpetrated in Syria "in the strongest possible
terms."
"President Assad needs to engage in political dialogue. A
transition needs to take place. If President Assad does not lead
that transition then he should step aside," Carney said.
France's UN ambassador Gerard Araud said that the diplomatic
wrangling, which has now gone on for two weeks, was costing lives.
"In that time 400 people, including women and children, have died,
sometimes under torture," he said. "Thousands of refugees have
fled Syria."
Some of those who have made it across the border into Turkey
described how the Syrian army had embarked on a scorched earth
policy in Jisr al-Shughur and other villages in Idlib province,
which has long been a hotbed of hostility towards the Damascus
government.
But while some troops had appeared to be bent on destruction,
others tried to defend the townsfolk and battles flared among the
army on Sunday when parts of a tank division defected and then set
up base by bridges into the town, they said.
"The troops are divided. Four tanks defected and they began to
fire on one another," said 35-year-old Abdullah, who fled Jisr
al-Shughur on Sunday and sneaked over the border into Turkey in
order to find food.
Ali, another Syrian refugee who made it to Turkey, also described
evidence of a rift within the ranks.
"There is now a split within the army and you have a group who are
trying to protect the civilians," the 27-year-old told AFP.
Abdullah, who like many refugees would give only his first name,
said that troops had now reached Ziayni, a town just six
kilometres from the Turkish border.
"They torched all the crops, they slaughtered the goats, the
cows," he said.
"In the town itself, all the bakeries and the supermarkets have
been pillaged, there is nothing left. The doors have been smashed
in," he said.
Syrian state media said that an official inquiry into an earlier
crackdown on anti-government protests in the Daraa region south of
Damascus had ruled that two senior officials - one a cousin of the
president - should be barred from going abroad pending further
investigation.
The bans affect Ateb Najib, Assad's cousin who headed security in
Daraa, and Faisal Kulthum, the town's former governor.
Protests erupted in Daraa and then spread around the country after
15 students were arrested on suspicion of writing anti-government
graffiti around the town.
The students were tortured and their fingernails extracted, Daraa
residents said.