Syria kills six as Turkey warns Assad

SYRIAN security forces pursuing anti-government protesters stormed several towns and villages, killing at least six people — including a child — and wounding many others during raids and house-to-house searches, activists said.

The largest operation appeared to be in Sarameen in the northern Idlib province, where the London-based Observatory for Human Rights said five people were killed and more than 60 wounded. One person also died during raids in Qara, a suburb of the capital, Damascus.

Similar raids were reported in the village of Heet near the border with Lebanon, along with a military buildup just outside the central town of Rastan, which has become a hotbed of dissent against President Bashar Assad’s regime during the five-month-old uprising.

The prime minister of Turkey, a former close ally, warned Assad his regime could face a demise like those in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya if the violent suppression of protests does not stop.

Syria has come under blistering international condemnation for its deadly crackdown on anti-government protests that began in March, and US and European leaders have demanded Assad step down.

The comments from Turkey were some of the bluntest warnings yet and were particularly biting because they came from a leader whose government had extensive diplomatic ties with Syria.

“The only way out is to immediately silence arms and to listen to the people’s demands,” said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.

“We have been watching the fate of those who did not chose this path in the past few months in Tunisia, in Egypt — and now in Libya — as a warning and with sadness.”

“Demands for democracy and freedom are the people’s just demands. In today’s world, there is no place for one-man rule, for autocratic regimes and closed communities,” Erdogan said.

Assad still has some international allies, including Iran and Russia.

Syria’s state-run news agency, SANA, said Assad met yesterday with senior Russian envoy Mikhail Bogdanov, who expressed Moscow’s support for Assad’s plans for reform in Syria. Assad, in turn, complained that his attempts at reform were met with a “regional and international campaign targeting Syria,” SANA said.

Assad has shrugged off the calls for him to step down, insisting armed gangs are driving the violence.

Meanwhile, Syrians should not take up arms in their uprising or invite foreign military action like the intervention that helped topple the government of Libya, a prominent activist group warned yesterday, saying “Militarisation would ... erode the moral superiority that has characterised the revolution since its beginning."