US troops began arriving in Turkey yesterday to man Patriot missile batteries against threats from neighbouring Syria, where the 21-month conflict between the regime and rebels has escalated.
Syrian air and ground forces were pounding insurgents dug in outside Damascus in a ferocious offensive being waged a day after a car bomb in the north of the capital killed at least 11 people, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The arrival of the US personnel specialised in the six Patriot systems to be deployed on the Turkey-Syria border in the coming weeks under a Nato agreement highlighted fears that Syria’s civil war could suck in other nations in the region.
Cross-border fire has already erupted on several occasions in recent months from combatants in Syria into Turkey, Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The US military’s European Command (EUCOM) said that the troops being sent to Turkey’s Incirlik air base would swell to 400 within days to support the two US Patriot batteries being supplied by America.
The United Nations this week said 60,000 people have died since the rebellion began in March 2011. Its figures showed average daily fatalities have multiplied since mid-2012, correlating with the increased use of regime air power.
Yesterday, fighter-bombers were hitting Duma, northeast of Damascus, and artillery was shelling the southwestern Daraya neighbourhood which the rebels have held against regime assaults for weeks, it said.
Troop reinforcements were being sent to Daraya, the British-based group added.
The offensive was being waged a day after a car bomb in the north Damascus neighbourhood of Massaken Barzeh, mostly inhabited by members of Assad’s Alawite minority, killed at least 11 people, the Observatory said.
Two children were among the dead, it said.
They were among at least 191 people who were killed on Thursday, including 99 civilians, the Observatory said, adding that fighting in Damascus and its outskirts accounted for 87 of those deaths.
Yesterday, at least 27 people died, 16 civilians and 11 rebels, according to preliminary Observatory figures.