MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay: The continued exchange of artillery fire between Syria and Turkey raises additional concerns that the conflict may escalate and spread to neighboring countries, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Saturday.
Panetta said the US is using its diplomatic channels to relay worries about the fighting in the hopes that it will not broaden.
His comments came on the heels of warnings from Turkey’s prime minister that his country is not far from war with Syria.
Turkish and Syria traded artillery fire Saturday as rebels clashed with President Bashar Assad’s forces near the border, heightening the fears that the crisis could erupt into a regional conflict. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday cautioned Damascus not to test Turkey’s “limits and determination” and said Ankara was not bluffing in saying it won’t tolerate such acts.
Despite the current friction between the two countries the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as said that he sees Syrian Vice President Faruq Al-Shara as a “man of reason” who could replace President Bashar Assad as the head of a transition administration to stop Syria’s civil war. The Turkish minister stressed that the Syrian opposition “is inclined to accept Shara” as the future leader of the Syrian administration.
Shara, the most visible Sunni Muslim figure in the minority Alawite-led government, is trusted by the regime and was foreign minister for 15 years before becoming vice president in 2006. Reports that he had defected in August were denied by Damascus, but some opposition leaders say he is apparently under house arrest.
Meanwhile, Syrian troops shelled rebel bastions in Aleppo and fought them on the streets of the northern city, while 10 bodies were found after the army routed insurgents from a town near Damascus, a watchdog said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported that regime forces on Sunday pounded the town of Tal-Abyad in the northern province of Raqa, which sits on the border with Turkey and is held by the rebels.
Turkey had on Friday shelled a Syrian military position south of Tal- Abyad in retaliation after a Syrian shell landed on its territory near the border.
That followed heavy bombardments of Syrian military positions near the border since Wednesday, when a shell smashed into a Turkish town killing five civilians and sparking outrage in Ankara and a UN Security Council condemnation.
Sunday’s bombardments in Aleppo, where fighting has raged since mid-July, targeted the embattled district of Sakhur in the east and Kalasseh in the southwest, the Britain-based Observatory said.
Fierce battles broke out between troops in rebels in Sakhur, further east in Hanano and in the central district of Midan, the watchdog added.