ISTANBUL — For the second time in a week, the bloody civil war in Syria spilled across border areas on Wednesday as rebel forces reportedly expelled government troops from a northern frontier crossing in an apparent expansion of the their effort to control infiltration and resupply routes in the campaign to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.
Turkish schools in the region were closed for the day after intense overnight clashes as the rebels attacked the Syrian frontier post at Tal Abyad, south of the Turkish town of Sanliurfa, according to the semiofficial Anatolian News Agency.
Television footage on Wednesday appeared to show members of the insurgent Free Syrian Army standing on the rooftop and hauling down the Syrian flag at the Tal Abyad customs post, which is less than a mile from Turkey's Akcakale crossing.
The rebels were also reported to have fired into the air and torn down posters of Mr. Assad to celebrate what news reports described as their first capture of a frontier post in the northern Raqqa province.
The Associated Press said Turkish video showed smoke rising from a small explosion atop of four-floor customs house, and added that three people in Turkey had been hit by stray bullets from the fighting.
The rebel action enabled Syrian citizens, trapped by earlier fighting and fleeing other towns further from the border, to pour into Turkey, The A.P. said, joining tens of thousands of others who have already fled into this country.
The United Nations refugee agency in Geneva said this week that the number of people fleeing Syria had increased from 18,500 in June to 35,000 in July to 102,000 in August.
The exodus has pushed the number of Syrian refugees to more than a quarter of a million, the agency said. Of the total, Turkey has more than 78,000, including those who have registered or are awaiting registration. Many more refugees have not registered with the authorities.
Two days of fighting for the Tal Abyad crossing came two days after the rebels attacked soldiers near Syria's border with Lebanon and then fled into Lebanese territory, followed by helicopters and warplanes firing missiles. A Lebanese Army colonel, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said at the time that missiles had landed in an area where the border is not clearly marked, but not inside Lebanon. He said warplanes and helicopters attacked rebel soldiers who had raided a checkpoint in the border area and killed four government soldiers.
The reported closure of schools in Turkey on Wednesday offered a counterpoint to official efforts in Syria to project an air of normalcy by ordering pupils back to class this week. But, with more than 2,000 school buildings destroyed or damaged in the fighting since March, 2011, and others taken over by rebels, teachers and pupils had "more pressing concerns" than turning up for class, a Syrian teacher said.
The latest fighting has inspired several recent accounts by human rights groups saying that civilians are increasingly caught in the fray. Amnesty International said on Wednesday that Syrian government forces had carried out indiscriminate air attacks and artillery strikes apparently intended to punish civilians perceived as sympathetic to the rebels.
A report by the organization, based on visits to areas of central Syria between Aug. 31 and Sept. 11, said that, while much international attention was focused on fighting for Damascus, the capital, and Aleppo, Syria's largest city and biggest commercial center, "indiscriminate air bombardments and artillery strikes by the Syrian Army are killing, maiming and terrorizing the residents of Jabal al-Zawiya and other parts of the Idlib and north Hama regions."
"Every day civilians are killed or injured in their homes, in the street, while running for cover or trying to shelter from the bombings. Hundreds have been killed or injured in recent weeks, many of them children, in indiscriminate attacks," amnesty International said.
In recent days, moreover, United Nations investigators and Human Rights Watch, based in New York, have also accused the rebels of misdoing.
In a report this week, Humans Rights Watch said armed opposition groups "have subjected detainees to ill-treatment and torture and committed extrajudicial or summary executions in Aleppo, Latakia, and Idlib."
But Sergio Pinheiro, the chairman of a United Nations human rights investigative panel, said the "crimes and abuses committed by antigovernment groups, though serious, did not reach the gravity, frequency and scale of those committed by the government forces and shabiha" pro-government militia.
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO 19 Sep, 2012
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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/world/middleeast/syria.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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