Gunmen stormed a pro-government Syrian TV
channel headquarters on Wednesday, bombing buildings and shooting dead three
employees, state media said, in one of the boldest attacks yet on a symbol of
the authoritarian state.
More than 150 people were killed in fierce
fighting across Syria on Wednesday, 86 of them civilians, the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights said. Intensified fighting in the country have
driven up the death toll averages to around 100 people per day in the past
week.
President Bashar al-Assad declared late on
Tuesday that his country was "at war". U.S. intelligence officials
said the Syrian government was "holding fairly firm" and digging in
for a long struggle against rebel forces who are getting stronger.
The dawn attack on Ikhbariya television's
offices, 20 km (15 miles) south of the capital, as well as overnight fighting
on the outskirts of Damascus showed the 16-month-old violence now rapidly
encroaching on the city.
Ikhbariya resumed broadcasting shortly
after the attack, which killed three journalists and four security guards,
displaying bullet holes in its two-storey concrete building and pools of blood
on the floor. One building was almost entirely destroyed.
"I heard a small explosion then a huge
explosion and gunmen ran in. They ransacked the offices and entirely destroyed
the newsroom," an employee who works at the offices in the town of Drousha
told state media at the scene.
Syrian media are tightly regulated by the
Ministry of Information. Although Ikhbariya is privately owned, opponents of
Assad say it is a government mouthpiece.
After Tuesday's fighting unprecedented in
its intensity around Damascus, violence appeared to ease off around the capital
following the attack on the television complex. But rebel forces were clearly
becoming stronger and more ambitious.
SYRIA "AT WAR"
During the pro-democracy revolt against the
Assad family's four-decade rule, Ikhbariya has been pushing to counter what it
says is a campaign of misinformation by Western and Arab satellite channels on
the uprising that began in March 2011.
"We live in a real state of war from
all angles," Assad told a cabinet he appointed on Tuesday, in a speech
broadcast on state television. "When we are in a war, all policies and all
sides and all sectors need to be directed at winning this war."
The declaration marks a change of rhetoric
from Assad, who had long dismissed the uprising against him as the work of
scattered militants in "terrorist gangs" funded from abroad.
The rambling speech - Assad also commented
on subjects as far afield as the benefits of renewable energy - left little
room for compromise. He denounced the West, which "takes and never gives,
and this has been proven at every stage".
International mediator Kofi Annan said he
had convened a ministerial-level meeting on Syria in Geneva on Saturday with
the aim of seeking an end to the violence and agreeing on principles for a
"Syrian-led political transition".
In a statement, the joint United
Nations-Arab League envoy said he had invited foreign ministers from the five
major powers - Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States - as well
as Turkey, the European Union, Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar.
Despite the deterioration in Syria, so far
there has been no sign of an appetite for full-scale Western intervention.
However, last week's shooting down of a Turkish warplane by Syrian air defences
has focused attention on a volatile situation on Turkey's southeastern border
with Syria.
"We will not refrain from teaching a
lesson to anyone trying to test Turkey's greatness," Turkish Prime
Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday, referring to the incident near the
countries' maritime borders.
Turkey's land border territories, hosting
over 33,000 refugees and units of the rebel Free Syria Army (FSA), are quickly
becoming a potential flashpoint. Tuesday's comments by Erdogan may if anything
have added further uncertainty to the situation there.
Erdogan said on Tuesday that Syrian
military elements approaching the border and posing a threat would be deemed a
military target. He made no public clarification of new terms of engagement
issued to troops.
"With Tayyip Erdogan's announcement,
and if Syria complies with it, Turkey will have by itself declared a de facto
'buffer zone'," Radikal newspaper columnist Cengiz Candar wrote.
"And if Bashar al-Assad doesn't comply
with this? That is, if he continues to send soldiers right up to the border?
Turkey runs the risk of a military operation against him."
Turkey has in the past spoken of possible
establishment of a 'humanitarian corridor' on Syrian soil - a venture that
would inevitably require armed protection. But it has always insisted such a
measure, if required by a rising tide of refugees or by evidence of massacres,
would need international endorsement
United Nations investigators said on
Wednesday Syrian government forces had committed human rights violations,
including executions, across the country "on an alarming scale"
during military operations in the past three months.
The report by the U.N. Human Rights
Council, issued in Geneva, also listed killings and kidnappings by armed
opposition groups trying to topple President Assad.
"The situation on the ground is
dangerously and quickly deteriorating," the report said.
Syria's ambassador dismissed the accusations
and threatened to end cooperation with international agencies.
The United Nations accuses Syrian forces of
killing more than 10,000 people during the conflict, which began with a popular
uprising and has built up into an armed insurgency.
A White House spokesman said of the attack
on the pro-government television station: "We condemn all acts of
violence, including those targeting pro-regime elements."
LONG FIGHT
The UK-based Observatory, which compiles
reports from activists across the country, reported battles on Tuesday near the
headquarters of the Republican Guard in Qudsiya, and in other Damascus suburbs
of al-Hama and Mashrou' Dumar, just 9 km from the capital.
Activists said the clashes were the
heaviest to hit areas on the outskirts of Damascus, once considered an
impenetrable Assad stronghold. Fighting in the suburbs outside the capital were
renewed again on Wednesday night, the Observatory said.
Despite some military defections, mainly
from low to mid-level ranks, Assad's inner circle remains cohesive and the war
is still likely to be a drawn-out struggle, senior U.S. intelligence officials
said, in an assessment dimming any U.S. hopes that Assad will fall soon.
"Our overall assessment ... would be
that we are still seeing the military regime forces fairly cohesive, they've
learned some lessons over the last year and a half about how to deal with this
kind of insurgency," an official said.
The insurgency is also getting stronger, he
said.
"Both sides seem to be girding for a
long struggle. Our sense is that the regime still believes it can ultimately
prevail or at least appears determined to try to prevail and the opposition at
the same time seems to be preparing for a long fight."
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