 | Wars in the World |
Daily News on Wars in the World and on New States
| FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK X FLIPBOARD TELEGRAM |
Another mortar shell from Syria struck Turkish territory on Saturday, prompting a fourth straight day of retaliatory artillery fire, and reviving fears that the crisis in Syria could spiral into a regional conflict.
The latest shelling comes a day after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on Syria not to test Turkey’s “limits and determination” and insisted that his country “was not bluffing” with its warnings.
Syrian rebels have shot down a military helicopter east of the capital Damascus, according to British based observers.
The new attack comes hours after rebels seized an air defence base nearby.
Syrian warplanes bombed a rebel neighbourhood of Homs on Friday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that it was the first time that fighter jets had been used against the central city.
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP that the bombardment of the Khaldiyeh district was the heaviest to hit Syria’s third-largest city in five months.
Sources in the Syrian capital of Damascus said that Turkish artillery fire hit various Syrian military targets in Idlib city.
Sources in Damascus argued that several Syrian military targets were hit by Turkish artillery fire.
Governor of the south-eastern province of Sanliurfa, Celalettin Guvenc said that 3-4 Syrian artillery shells landed in Akcakale town at around 16.30 hours today.
Speaking to reporters after a meeting at the mayor’s office in Akcakale, Guvenc stressed that one of the artillery shells hit a residence killing 5 people inside.
A Hezbollah commander and several other fighters from the Lebanese Shiite militant group have been killed in Syria, a senior Lebanese security official and Syrian activists said Tuesday.
Hezbollah, which is backed by both Syria and Iran, is a strong ally of President Bashar Assad’s embattled regime and has long been accused by the Syrian opposition of assisting Damascus in its crackdown on the 18-month-old uprising — a claim the group has repeatedly denied.
Syrian rebels and troops have waged intense battles around a historic souk in the northern city of Aleppo after they suffered severe damage from a weekend fire.
Meanwhile army shelling and air raids have killed dozens of civilians in flashpoint towns of Syria’s conflict, while at least 18 soldiers have died in a rebel attack in the centre of the country, a monitoring group says.
“Twenty-one civilians, including eight children, were killed in bombing on the town of Salqeen, and the number is expected to rise because many are in critical condition,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday.