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Syrian Warplanes Strike Homs as Rebels Claim to Capture Base
Syrian Warplanes Strike Homs as Rebels Claim to Capture Base
(about 11 hours later)
ISTANBUL — Syrian government warplanes and artillery were reported on Friday to have launched a ferocious barrage against the central city of Homs while, near the capital, Damascus, rebels said they captured an air defense base with a cache of surface-to-air missiles.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — A large armored contingent of Syria’s elite Republican Guard stormed a western Damascus suburb near the presidential palace on Friday, residents and antigovernment activists said, bringing intense combat with insurgents unusually close to the doorstep of the embattled Syrian leadership.
The fighting came a day after the bloody, 18-month conflict raised broad fears of regional repercussions when Turkish artillery hit Syria for a second consecutive day on Thursday following a mortar attack on Wednesday that killed five Turkish civilians. Turkey’s Parliament reinforced Ankara’s resolute message by authorizing further military action against Syria.
Hundreds of residents fled the fighting, which followed days of shelling by government forces after a three-month truce collapsed in the area. Home to hundreds of Guard members and their families, the suburb extends to within a mile of the palace, the residence of President Bashar al-Assad, which overlooks the capital.
The confrontation between the two countries along the divide between the NATO alliance and the Arab world threatened to escalate a confrontation that has highlighted Turkey’s fraught double role as it tries to stay out of direct involvement in the fight against President Bashar al-Assad of Syria while offering haven and support to the rebels.
The government and its armed opponents blamed one another, each claiming that residents of the neighborhood, Qudsaya, had requested protection from the other side.
Inside war-battered Syria, Friday’s bombardment of Homs by airstrikes, tank and mortar fire subjected rebel strongholds to their heaviest bombardment in months, according to The Associated Press quoting activists. Some analysts suggested that the focus on big cities like Homs and Aleppo further north showed that the government was maintaining its focus on urban warfare rather than regional maneuvering.
“I feel there is no secure district or suburb in the whole of Damascus,” a 40-year-old Qudsaya resident, who gave only a nickname, Abu Mohammed, said in an interview. “We can see the Republican Palace, and I am sure that Bashar al-Assad is hearing his elite forces attack us. He will not feel happy and sleep well if the fighting is next to his palace.”
Anti-government activists also reported that security forces, led by 4,000 Republican Guards, stormed the Qudsaya area on the outskirts of Damascus, following shelling of the area on Thursday. The area is on the hills above Damascus near the presidential palace and a key area where the government wants to maintain control.
On the other side of the capital, in the suburb of East Ghouta, rebels celebrated their apparent downing of a helicopter, documented in dramatic videos of the craft losing its rotors, spinning to earth and exploding, and jubilant young men dragging its tail section behind a pickup truck. Rebels also claimed to have seized an air defense base in the area earlier in the week, in videos that showed beaming fighters posing with antiquated surface-to-air missiles amid smoldering buildings and army vehicles, insulting Mr. Assad and shouting, “God willing, we’re coming for you!”
For their part, the insurgents said on Friday that they fought back against government advances, capturing an air defense base with a cache of missiles on Thursday.
Taken together, the surge of military activity portrayed a government forced to exert itself on many fronts to manage a conflict that shows no signs of abating.
Reinforcing the claim, video posted on YouTube showed rebels clad in military uniforms in front of a military installation with black smoke spiraling upward.
The fighting around Damascus came as antigovernment activists reported a renewal of fierce army shelling of Homs, the central city that has long been a trouble spot for Mr. Assad. The shelling demonstrated that the government is still struggling to control the city, which it had declared insurgent-free eight months ago after an extended siege.
Another video showed a jubilant fighter, bearded, wearing a crisp camouflage flak vest and carrying a semiautomatic rifle, clambering onto a trailer carrying what appeared to be a surface-to-air missile. Off camera, a voice hails the man, Abu Khattab, as the leader of the unit that claimed to have captured the base. “Thank god! Praise god!” voices cry as he raises his rifle and screams: “Get out, Bashar, you’re not strong enough to carry a missile!”
The government’s own accounts, issued Friday, of confiscating large amounts of heavy weapons and explosives from Qudsaya and nearby areas suggested how deeply the rebellion had penetrated even into a Republican Guard stronghold. And fears of regional repercussions continued to build as Turkish artillery hit Syria for a third consecutive day after a Syrian mortar killed five Turkish civilians on Wednesday.
Yet another video, which purported to document the shooting down of a Syrian warplane near the base on Friday, showed an out-of-control aircraft in the distance tumbling from a low altitude followed by a burst of thick black smoke, presumably from the impact.
No casualties were reported in the cross-border shelling, in which Turkey reported that another Syrian shell fell on its territory. But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, armed with Thursday’s authorization from Parliament to respond with further military action against Syria, issued a stern warning.
“Those who attempt to test Turkey’s deterrence, decisiveness and capacity,” the Anatolian News Agency quoted him as saying, “I say here that they are making a fatal mistake.”
Turkey is a member of the NATO alliance, in which an attack on one member country can be considered an attack on all, raising the possibility that NATO could be drawn into the Syria conflict.
Turkey has also enraged Syria by providing haven for rebels during the uprising, by far the bloodiest of the Arab revolts.
Antigovernment activists reported that security forces, led by 4,000 Republican Guard forces, stormed the Qudsaya area with artillery and tanks.
The government said its forces had entered because citizens were “fed up with the acts of killing, abduction, sabotage and blocking of roads committed by the terrorists,” its term for its armed opponents. Syria’s SANA state news agency said that rebels had evicted residents and turned homes into firing positions.
Abu Mohammed, the Qudsaya resident, said that three months ago the president had sent senior Republican Guard officers to negotiate with the people of Qudsaya and Hameh, a neighboring area where fighting also flared on Friday. He said an agreement had been reached that neither security forces nor insurgents would enter the area.
“The agreement was good for both sides; there was no arresting, no killing and no shabiha,” he said, referring to pro-government militias. But recently, he said, shabiha from the president’s Alawite minority had violated the truce by killing three young men and attacking women, so residents sought protection from rebels, who began attacking government checkpoints. The government has shelled the area since Tuesday, according to residents and video posted by activists.
Rebel video posted on YouTube purporting to document the captured air base showed uniformed insurgents in front of a military installation with black smoke spiraling.
Another video showed a jubilant bearded fighter in a crisp camouflage flak vest and carrying a semiautomatic rifle as he clambered onto a trailer with what appeared to be a Soviet-made SA-2 surface-to-air missile. Off camera, a voice hails the man, Abu Khattab, as the leader of the unit that claimed to have captured the base. “Thank God! Praise God!” voices cry as he raises his rifle and screams, “Get out, Bashar, you’re not strong enough to carry a missile!”
The SA-2, which dates to the 1960s and requires a large crew to operate, is most likely useless in the battle, but rebels said they had captured other weapons from the base.
On Friday, helicopter gunships and fighter jets attacked the area, according to activist video. In one video a helicopter can be seen hovering. A piece of a main rotor snaps off and collides with the tail rotor, which appears to fall. As the aircraft tumbles and spins, voices shout “God is great!” and thick black smoke rises upon ground impact.
Rebels have previously downed helicopters with heavy machine guns, which video shows were being used in the area. The events appeared consistent with the use of such weapons.
There was no means of independently verifying the claims or the videos since access to Syria is severely restricted.
There was no means of independently verifying the claims or the videos since access to Syria is severely restricted.
There were no immediate reports on Friday of further Turkish artillery strikes, but reporters in the border area said civilians seemed to be avoiding places near the frontier for fear of further exchanges.
Reporting
was contributed by an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria; C. J. Chivers from the United States; Hwaida Saad and Hania Mourtada from Beirut; Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul; and Alan Cowell from Paris.
Beyond its military purposes, the Turkish retaliation was seen as a reaction to growing public frustration with Turkey’s policy toward Syria — which has done little to push out Mr. Assad, while bringing hardship to Turks, who have lost trade and have been forced to take in about 100,000 refugees. The Turkish leadership also feels that it has been left alone by Western allies to manage an increasingly combustible situation, experts and commentators said.
“I don’t see what else the government could do,” said Soli Ozel, an academic and a columnist, who said he viewed Turkey’s response as one of restraint that made good on warnings that it would strike Syria if its border were threatened. “That is the least they could do. They have so tied themselves to massive retaliation rhetoric that they had to do something.”
Turkish gunners fired into Syria after weeks in which towns in southeastern Turkey had been hit by stray bullets and shells coming from Syria. The parliamentary measure, which was ratified after several hours of a closed-door session in the capital, Ankara, permits cross-border raids, although senior officials insisted that Turkey, a member of NATO, was not the aggressor.
“Turkey does not want war with Syria,” Ibrahim Kalin, a senior aide to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, wrote on Twitter. “But Turkey is capable of protecting its borders and will retaliate when necessary.” In a separate message, he said that “political, diplomatic initiatives will continue.”
In supporting the Syrian rebels by allowing weapons smuggling and the cross-border flow of fighters and refugees — and enduring the spillover effects of economic collapse in border areas and errant munitions — the government had little choice but to respond militarily, analysts said, even if the strike on Turkish territory was unintentional.
And ever since Syria downed a Turkish warplane in June, the government has been under domestic pressure to act.
“Many felt disappointed about the government’s lack of action when Syria shot down a Turkish warplane in June and got away with it,” said Nihat Ali Ozcan, an analyst at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey.
Given that fighting had been raging just across the border, some analysts said it was not surprising that munitions struck within Turkey — which sent more tanks and antiaircraft weapons to the border on Thursday — and questioned the intensity of Turkey’s response.
“I think the Syrians truly overshot,” said Soner Cagaptay, the director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He added: “The question is why did Turkey respond the way it did? I think this is Ankara’s retaliation to the Syrians’ shooting down the Turkish plane in June.”
The episode may also have pointed to Turkey’s increasingly close relationship with the rebels. Though its military said it used radar to identify targets, rebels claimed on Thursday that they aided the Turkish military in its targeting for the artillery strikes.
An antigovernment fighter and activist in the area in Syria where the Turkish shells struck said he helped the Turks fire shells that killed 14 soldiers and destroyed several armored vehicles.
The fighter, Ayham al-Khalaf, said in an interview by Skype that shortly after the Syrian shell hit Turkish territory, a Turkish officer contacted him. “He was speaking in a broken Arabic accent, asking my help getting the exact location of the artillery battery,” Mr. Khalaf said. “So I Googled the location, and I gave them exact details about the location and the distance.”
For weeks, Turkey’s leaders have faced a public backlash over their aggressive posture toward Syria, a sentiment owed partly to a feeling that Turkey may be on the right side in the fight but that it is isolated, without the backing of its Western allies, including the United States, as China, Russia and Iran have lined up forcefully behind the government of Mr. Assad. That feeling deepened after the latest crisis.
“We are now at a very critical juncture,” Melih Asik, a columnist, wrote in the centrist newspaper Milliyet. “We are not only facing Syria, but Iran, Iraq, Russia and China are behind it as well. Behind us, we have nothing but the provocative stance and empty promises of the U.S.”
Even if the decision to strike was partly motivated by flagging domestic support, the strike came against overwhelming opposition among the public for unilateral military action, according to a recent poll. The poll, conducted by the Strategic and Social Research Center, based in Ankara, found that 76 percent of Turks living in cities opposed unilateral military intervention, and that 56 percent believed that the government had mismanaged the Syria crisis. In addition, 66 percent said Turkey should not allow Syrian refugees into the country. The telephone survey was conducted last month in 27 urban areas.
“I doubt that much will have changed after this incident,” said Mr. Ozel, the academic and columnist.
Some of the public opposition to a unilateral strike against Syria was reflected on the streets in Istanbul on Thursday evening, when a few thousand protesters marched down a central avenue, chanting antiwar slogans and railing against Mr. Erdogan and his governing party, the Justice and Development Party.
In a letter to the United Nations, Turkey called on the Security Council to “take the necessary measures against Syria’s offensive actions toward Turkey.”
On Thursday, despite initial resistance from Russia, the Security Council unanimously condemned “in the strongest terms” Syria’s shelling of the Turkish town. In its statement, the council said that “this incident highlighted the grave impact the crisis in Syria has on the security of its neighbors and on regional peace and stability.”
Russia and China both vetoed three previous Security Council resolutions addressing the Syria conflict and have urged Western powers to put more pressure on the antigovernment forces to stop fighting. Russian protection of the Assad government is one reason cited by analysts for Syria’s refusal to put into effect any kind of cease-fire.
NATO held an emergency meeting on Wednesday night and condemned the attack, but it did not suggest that it would invoke the clause in its charter that would require a collective response by NATO allies to the conflagration between Syria and Turkey.
Tim Arango reported from Istanbul, Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul; Hala Droubi, Hania Mourtada and Anne Barnard from Beirut; and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 5, 2012
Correction: October 5, 2012
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Turkey. It is a Muslim country, but not an Arab one.
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Turkey. It is a Muslim country, but not an Arab one.
