Syria skyter ned tyrkisk fly

Syriske myn­dig­he­ter inn­røm­mer at de skjøt ned et tyr­kisk fly over Middelhavet.

Hen­del­sen repre­sen­te­rer en ny alvor­lig utvik­ling. Tyr­kia er NATO-land.

BBCs Jim Muir sier det er ingen tegn til anger fra syrisk side. Han tror det kan stemme at det tyr­kiske flyet hadde kren­ket syrisk luft­rom, ellers hadde pro­tes­ten vært sterkere.

Tur­key announ­ced Fri­day that Syrian for­ces had shot down a Tur­kish warp­lane with two crew mem­bers over the Medi­ter­ranean, a potenti­ally ominous turn for the worse in rela­tions alre­ady frayed because of Turkey’s sup­port for Syrian rebels figh­ting to overthrow Pre­si­dent Bashar al-Assad.
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The Syri­ans later ack­now­led­ged their anti­air­craft gunners had dow­ned the plane, con­ten­ding it had vio­la­ted Syrian airspace.

Turkey’s announ­ce­ment, from the office of Prime Minis­ter Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan, came after an emer­gency security meeting by Tur­kish offi­ci­als in Ankara over the fate of the plane, which had been reported mis­sing hours ear­lier amid con­flic­ting reports over whether it had crashed or had been dow­ned intentionally.

Et syrisk heli­kop­ter ble fre­dag fløyet til Jor­dan hvor pilo­ten fikk asyl, et pre­sti­sje­tap for Bashar al-Assad.

The new rup­ture in Turkish-Syrian rela­tions came as reports of a pos­sible new mass kil­ling emer­ged Fri­day in Syria’s northern Aleppo Province.

Oppo­sition acti­vists said those kil­lings, in the vil­lage of Daret Azzeh, were the out­come of a mili­tary skir­mish in which sol­di­ers of the Free Syrian Army, the main armed rebel force, car­ried out a sur­prise attack on a group that inclu­ded sus­pec­ted mem­bers of the sha­biha, the feared pro-government militia accu­sed by the oppo­sition of com­pli­city in numerous kil­lings, deten­tions and tor­ture. At least 25 men were shot to death.

“The armed oppo­sition in the area ambus­hed a num­ber of cars,” said the Syrian Obser­va­tory for Human Rights, an antigovern­ment group based in Bri­tain with networks of con­tacts inside Syria.

A video that the Obser­va­tory pos­ted online from acti­vists, said to have been recor­ded in Daret Azzeh, showed car­nage, with bloo­died corp­ses piled around a white pickup truck ridd­led with bul­let holes. Many corp­ses were clot­hed in mili­tary fati­gues or black clot­hes, a trade­mark of the shabiha.

Syria Shoots Down Tur­kish Warp­lane, Fray­ing Ties Further