Syria 'risks clash with Turkey if troops continue border assault'

Conflict warning: Hillary Clinton
12 April 2012

More than 1,500 Syrians have fled into Turkey in the past 24 hours as the Syrian army sweeps along the border to stamp out anti-government protests, prompting fury in Ankara and risking the prospect of border clashes.

Most of the refugees had set up makeshift camps just inside Syrian territory but then fled when the army appeared. About 11,000 people are now living along the Turkish side of the border in makeshift camps.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Syrian troops must pull back or fighting could spread into Turkey. She said: "Unless the Syrian forces immediately end their attacks and their provocations that are not only now affecting their own citizens, but engendering the potential of border clashes, then we're going to see an escalation of conflict in the area."

This morning Syrian troops could be seen overlooking the border, occupying prominent buildings and manning sand-bagged machinegun posts. Armoured personnel carriers patrolled the roads.

Soldiers yesterday stormed the village of Khirbat al-Joz, which is less than a mile from Turkish soil and a centre for refugees trying to escape the Syrian government's military campaign to suppress the three-month old revolt.

It is the first time Damascus has sent its army to the frontier in more than a decade and the move violated a 1999 accord with Ankara. Turkey's prime minister Recep Erdogan has attacked the repression as "savagery" and called on the regime of Bashar al-Assad to implement genuine reforms.

Yesterday Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu summoned the Syrian ambassador. The two countries almost went to war in the late Nineties when Kurdish militants used Syria as a sanctuary.

Elsewhere it was alleged that a senior diplomat at the Syrian embassy in London has been conducting a campaign of harassment, intimidation and threats against activists in London.

According to the Times a vice-consul at the embassy is a representative of the Syrian intelligence services. Mohammad Samouri is alleged to have sought to recruit London-based Syrians to spy on opponents of the regime in Damascus.

The Syrian embassy denied the claims, which the Foreign Office said it was investigating.

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