By AFP
Al Arabiya, Damascus, 18 October 2011 – Syrian troops on Tuesday mounted the fiercest raids in the Damascus region of their seven-month crackdown on dissent, a human rights group said, as neighboring Turkey welcomed opposition leaders for their first formal talks.
A sniper killed a military intelligence officer in Idlib province close to the Turkish border as armed resistance to the security forces spread, while search operations in the flashpoint central province of Homs wounded 15 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
Around the capital, “several towns were targeted by the fiercest security operations since the start of the revolution” in mid-March, the Britain-based watchdog said in a statement received in Nicosia.
“The army and the security services have imposed a complete blockade and snipers are posted on tower blocks,” it added.
“Residents are being prevented from getting to their places of work or study and dozens of young people were arrested.”
Troops also detained 25 people in the city of Daraa, south of Damascus, where the unprecedented protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s 11-year rule began, and 15 in the town of Saraqeb in Idlib province, the watchdog added.
In Homs province, troops wounded five people in the town of Qusayr close to the Lebanese border and another nine in villages during search operations for army deserters, the Observatory said.
“Convoys of armored cars criss-crossed the streets of Qusayr, firing on anything that moved and particularly at motorcycles.”
On Monday, the Observatory said troops killed 27 people, most of them civilians but some of them police, in Homs city.
In Ankara, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu received leaders of the Syrian opposition for their first formal talks and urged them to forge a united front in pursuit of a peaceful transition from Assad’s iron-fisted rule, a Turkish diplomat said.
“Turkey advised the (Syrian National Council) to be unified and work together to proceed towards democratic and peaceful transition in Syria … because the current situation cannot be sustained,” the diplomat said.
The SNC, the largest and most representative Syrian opposition grouping, was founded in Istanbul at the end of August and numbers 140 members, half of them living in Syria.
Ankara had developed close ties with Assad’s regime over the past decade but has expressed growing frustration with the president’s failure to address popular demands for reform.
U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said at the weekend that more than 3,000 people, including 187 children, have been killed in the regime’s crackdown.
She warned that Syria risked “a full-blown civil war.”
Earlier this month, a top army defector now living across the border in Turkey called for military aid to help his armed opposition group topple the Damascus regime.
Colonel Riad al-Assad, who defected in July, appealed for weapons for the “Syrian Free Army” he has set up.
“If the international community helps us, then we can do it, but we are sure the struggle will be more difficult without arms,” he said in the interview published by the English-language Hurriyet Daily News.