Beirut: Soldiers who left President Bashar Al Assad's army and set up an opposition force called for a no-fly zone and two buffer areas with international backing as they seek to topple the Syrian government.
The group wants a buffer zone in the north, on the Turkish-Syrian border, and another in the south near the border with Jordan to help them bring the fight closer to Al Assad, Riad Al Asaad, a former Syrian colonel who leads the Free Syrian Army, said in a phone interview from Turkey yesterday.
"Our operations are increasing and we will reach the presidential palace," Asaad said. "The regime is going to fall. It may take longer if there is no international foreign assistance, but it's not going to stay. It's finished."
The group, using rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, this week assaulted a base near the Syrian capital Damascus linked to air force intelligence, said Ammar Al Wawi, spokesman of the 10-member military council that heads the FSA. The Free Syrian Army also destroyed an armoured personnel carrier at a base used by the intelligence agency in the city of Aleppo, he said. Air force intelligence has helped the government put down the protests.
Welcomes assistance
Though no country has yet offered help to the Free Syrian Army, the group "welcomes all assistance," said Asaad, 50. He said he has a force of more than 25,000 who have been launching targeted attacks against security and intelligence units of the Al Assad government.
On Thursday, army defectors using rocket-propelled grenades attacked the ruling Baath Party offices housing security agents in the town of Maaret Al Numan, near the border with Turkey, Al Wawi said in an interview yesterday. An ambush of Al Assad's forces left 34 government soldiers dead.
"This force has taken matters to a new level that anti- Al Assad forces could not before," said Theodore Karasik, director of research at the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai. "With the three separate attacks this week, they have raised the ante and are preparing the ground for a no-fly zone, similar to the scenario in Libya, which may have the support of a number of countries."
