Tensions soar as Syria bans Turkish flights - The Australian [getdailynow.blogspot.com]
SYRIA has banned Turkish flights from its airspace and Turkey has made a similar tit-for-tat move, as regime forces pressed their counterattack against rebels to regain territory lost in northern battlegrounds.
The reprisal for Turkey confiscating a cargo of what Russia said was radar equipment being flown from Moscow to Damascus came despite a flurry of diplomacy intended to calm soaring tensions between the neighbours.
Syria accuses Turkey of channelling arms from Gulf Arab states to rebels fighting its troops, who have been under mounting pressure across large swaths of the north, including in Aleppo.
The Syrian flight ban went into force from midnight local time "in accordance with the principle of reciprocity", SANA state news agency said.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said later that Ankara had already banned Syrian civilian flights from its airspace.
"Yesterday (Saturday) we closed our airspace to Syrian civilian flights as we have previously done for Syrian military flights," he said.
"As we have established that civilian flights were being misused by the Syrian defence ministry to transport military material, we sent a note yesterday to the Syrian side," Mr Davutoglu said.
Ankara has taken an increasingly strident line towards its southern neighbour since a shell fired from inside Syria killed five Turks on October 3.
It has since repeatedly hit back for cross-border fire, prompting growing UN concern and a hasty series of diplomatic contacts.
Tensions from the conflict are also being felt in neighbouring Lebanon, and hundreds of people took to the streets of Beirut for two separate rallies, one supporting the Damascus regime and the other calling for its downfall.
With the violence raging, UN and Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi yesterday went to Iran, which handed him an "unofficial detailed proposal" aimed at ending the conflict in its closest ally, Syria.
Mr Brahimi, on his second regional tour after taking up his post at the start of last month, welcomed the initiative but reiterated a call by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for Damascus to initiate a ceasefire.
On the battlefield, the military used fighter jets to bombard Maaret al-Numan, captured by the rebel Free Syrian Army earlier in the week, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
To the east, troops tried to block a new rebel assault on Wadi Deif army base - the largest in Idlib province, much of which is in rebel hands. Battles erupted nearby as warplanes bombarded the area, the Observatory said.
A military official and the Observatory said troops also recaptured Aleppo's Umayyad mosque two days after rebels claimed control of the site, an important foothold they were hoping to take before surrounding the regime-held citadel.
In Damascus, two explosions hit the upscale district of Mazzeh early yesterday, the Observatory said, adding that one targeted the car of a pro-regime lawyer who was critically wounded.
In Damascus province, troops took back control of a military base in Atibah, a day after rebels had seized it.
Dozens of corpses were found in a hospital morgue of the province, said the Observatory's Rami Abdel Rahman, adding that they might be of men killed in fighting "over the course of recent months".
At least 74 people were killed nationwide yesterday, the Observatory said, in addition to more than 33,000 who have died since the revolt against the regime erupted in March last year.
AFP
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