Ankara Turkey said Friday it might set up a border "buffer zone" to protect growing numbers of Syrian refugees fleeing a violent uprising against President Bashar Al Assad.
With the bloody revolt entering its second year, government forces battled protesters in at least three suburbs of the capital Damascus, opposition activists said. They also reported flare-ups in other towns and cities.
Al Assad faced growing international isolation as more Gulf states announced they were shutting their embassies and the Turkish Foreign Ministry said it "strongly urged" its citizens to leave the country because of growing security concerns.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, once a firm ally of Al Assad, said he was considering setting up a buffer zone along the border with Syria. Ankara might then withdraw its ambassador once its nationals had returned home.
"A buffer zone, a security zone, are things being studied," he told reporters in Ankara, but said other ideas were also under consideration. "It would be wrong to look at it from only one perspective."
Some 45 civilians had been killed in the region in the past day, including 23 whose bodies were found with their hands tied behind their backs, as well as five army deserters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported.
The Syrian government says it is grappling with an insurgency by terrorists and foreign-backed militants and denies accusations of brutality against civilians.
Ankara is wary of any military intervention in Syria, fearing a broader civil war could spill over its borders, but a buffer zone would need armed protection, analysts say.
Turkey set up such a zone along the border with Iraq during the Gulf War in the early 1990s when tens of thousands of refugees headed towards its territory.
Activists said security forces fired heavily in southern Damascus's Qadam suburb yesterday to chase demonstrators off the roads.
They also reported firing in the western suburb of Daraya and clashes with army deserters in Gouta, east of the capital, which has seen gun battles in the past.
Isolation
A Kurdish news agency in Turkey said many Kurds had staged a protest in Syria's second city Aleppo as well as other centres. It reported one person shot dead in Hassaka in north-east Syria.
Reports from Syria cannot be independently verified as authorities have barred outside rights groups and journalists.
Underlining Al Assad's growing isolation, four members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) announced the closures of their embassies in protest against its violent crackdown, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said.
Kuwait, Oman, UAE and Qatar were to follow in the footsteps of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and halt diplomatic activity in Syria, the GCC was quoted as saying in a statement.
