Syria fires at refugee camp in Turkey

Syrian forces fired across the border yesterday into a refugee camp in Turkey, wounding at least five people as a UN-brokered plan to end more than a year of violence this week all but collapsed, authorities said.

Syrian activists said two people were killed, but the reports could not be immediately confirmed.

Meanwhile, Syrian soldiers shot dead a cameraman working for Lebanon’s Al- Jadeed television channel yesterday near the border between the two countries, the television channel said.

In Turkey, the Syrian soldiers were believed to be firing at rebels who tried to escape to the refugee camp after ambushing a military checkpoint, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, citing a network of sources on the ground.

Turkey shelters thousands of refugees who have fled Syria as the government tries to crush a revolt against President Bashar Assad. The UN estimates some 9,000 people have been killed in Syria since Mar 2011, when the uprising began.

Yesterday’s shooting bolstered fears that the uprising could spark a broad conflagration by sucking in neighbouring countries. There have been similar cross-border attacks into Lebanon, although yesterday’s shooting was believed to be the first inside Turkey.

The incident began before dawn yesterday when rebel fighters attacked Syrian soldiers at a checkpoint near the Turkish border, killing six soldiers, said Rami Abdul-Rahman, a spokesman for the Observatory.

The troops then kept firing as eight wounded rebels escaped to the camp that is just across the border in Turkey, sending bullets whizzing across the frontier into the camp, he said.

According to the Observatory, the shooting wounded five people in the camp, which is next to the Oncupinar border post near the town of Kilis in Gaziantep province.

The province’s governor, Yusuf Odabas, said five people were wounded: three Syrians, one Turkish translator and one Turkish policeman. The translator had entered the camp to try to help calm an anti-Assad protest, he said. The governor said Turkish military forces did not return fire.

The shooting prompted Ankara, which has been among Assad’s harshest critics, to summon the Syrian charge d’affaires and call for an immediate halt to the gunfire.

Turkey hosts some 24,000 Syrian refugees, including hundreds of army defectors, and has considered setting up a buffer zone inside Syria if the flow of displaced people across its border becomes overwhelming.

The two countries share a 911km-long border.

Syrian troops were meant to pull out of population centres by this morning, but the government on Sunday introduced a new demand saying it cannot withdraw without written guarantees from opposition fighters that they will lay down their arms. Syria’s main rebel group rejected the government’s demands.

Annan is scheduled to visit one of the refugee camps in Hatay province, bordering Syria, this afternoon, Turkey’s foreign ministry said. Annan’s office confirmed the trip to Turkey.

Back in Lebanon, Al-Jadeed television channel said cameraman Ali Shaaban was on the Lebanese side of the frontier, in the northern Lebanese region of Wadi Khaled, when soldiers opened fire on a car carrying the Al-Jadeed crew.

Shaaban’s colleague Hussein Khreiss said: “We told our Syrian brothers . . . that we are not military . . . but they opened fire heavily on the car,” the channel’s website quoted him as saying.