71 Syrian army officers defect to Turkey

Beirut: Seventy-one officers, including six generals, have defected from the Syrian army to Turkey, a Turkish official said yesterday, the biggest single mass desertion of senior soldiers from President Bashar Al Assad’s security forces in months. It was not immediately clear why the group had deserted. Meanwhile, Syrian artillery and warplanes pounded rebel areas in Damascus yesterday as Al Assad’s foes pleaded for advanced weapons from the US, which has promised them unspecified military aid. Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander Salim Idriss said on Friday that rebels, who have suffered setbacks at the hands of Al Assad’s forces in recent weeks, urgently needed anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, as well as a protective no-fly zone. “But our friends in United States, they haven’t told us yet that they are going to support us with weapons and ammunition,” he said after meeting US and European officials in Turkey. A source in the Middle East familiar with US dealings with the rebels has said planned arms supplies would include automatic weapons, light mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. Russia, an ally of Damascus and fierce opponent of outside military intervention, warned on Saturday against any attempt to enforce a no-fly zone over Syria using F-16 fighter jets and Patriot air defence missile systems from Jordan. “You don’t have to be a great expert to understand that this will violate international law,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference with his Italian counterpart in Moscow.

Western diplomats said on Friday the US was considering a no-fly zone over Syria, but the White House said later that it would be far harder and costlier to set up one up there than it was in Libya, stressing that the US had no national interest in pursuing that option. Outgunned rebels have few ways to counter Al Assad’s air power. The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said jets and artillery had attacked Jobar, a battered district where rebels operate on the edge of central Damascus yesterday. It said heavy artillery was also shelling opposition fighters in the provinces of Homs, Aleppo and Deir Al Zor.

The UN says at least 93,000 people, including civilians and combatants, have died in the Syrian civil war, with the monthly death toll averaging 5,000 in the past year.