Army defectors reportedly killed 11 Syrian soldiers yesterday, four in a bombing, as the unrest sweeping Syria edged closer to all-out armed conflict and the UN chief urged an immediate end to the bloodletting.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said troops also killed 23 people, most of them civilians but some of them police, as President Bashar al-Assad’s regime pressed its brutal crackdown on dissent.
“Gunmen suspected of being army defectors blew up a bomb by remote control as an army vehicle passed by Ehssem in the countryside of the (northwestern province of Idlib), killing an officer and three soldiers, and wounding others,” the Observatory’s Rami Abdel Rahman said in Nicosia.
The Britain-based watchdog said that another seven soldiers were killed in clashes with gunmen suspected too of being army defectors in the flashpoint central province of Homs.
Analysts have warned that the longer the repression continues, the more chance there is of opposition groups taking up arms, while UN human rights chief Navi Pillay warned at the weekend that Syria risked “a full-blown civil war.”
Mr Pillay said that more than 3,000 people, including 187 children, have been killed in the crackdown on anti-regime protests.
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.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon meanwhile urged Mr Assad to immediately stop the killings of civilians, a day after the Arab League called for “national dialogue” to end the violence.
“There are continuous killings of civilian people. These killings must stop immediately,” Mr Ban said in Bern.
“I told Assad: ‘Stop before it is too late’,” he said.
“It is unacceptable that 3,000 people have been killed. The UN is urging him again to take urgent action.”
Mr Ban also called on Mr Assad to accept an international commission of inquiry into rights violations ordered by the UN Human Rights Council in April. Damascus has blocked investigators from entering the country.
The Observatory reported that scores of soldiers were also wounded in confrontations yesterday with suspected army defectors, including at least 17 in Idlib province.
The watchdog said that troops killed 23 people during search operations yesterday, most of them in Homs, which has been one of the centres of the unprecedented protests against Assad’s 11-year rule that have swept the country since mid-March.