Thousands of Syrians have fled the historic town of Maarat al-Numaan to escape troops and tanks pushing into the north in a widening military campaign to crush protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
In Turkey, which has been receiving thousands of Syrian refugees escaping military assaults, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan held talks on Wednesday with an envoy of Assad as Ankara pressed its southern neighbor to end military attacks in Syrian cities and towns that it has called “savagery.”
Residents said an armored column had reached the village of Mantas, 15km to the east of Maarat al-Numaan, while another column was 20km west at the village of al-Khwein. Troops also continued to be airlifted by helicopter to a staging camp 2km from the town, residents said.
“The troops are firing randomly at the outskirts of al-Maarat al-Numaan to scare the population, which drove more people to flee tonight,” one witness in the village of Maarshamsha on the edge of Maarat al-Numaan said by telephone.
In the conservative Damascus suburb of Harasta, security forces fired live ammunition to disperse a night protest by 200 women demanding the release of their husbands and relatives, arrested in an intensifying security sweep to put down the three-month uprising, a witness said.
Turkish officials said 8,500 Syrians, many from Jisr al-Shughour, had sought sanctuary in Turkey, which has set up four refugee camps across the border.
Refugees said there had been no mass movement back and another 10,000 were sheltering inside Syria close to the border.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who speaks Arabic, went to the border and talked to refugees, including wounded men lying on beds in camp hospitals.
“I’ll talk to [Assad’s envoy] and will share with him with all frankness what I saw. We are seeing a humanitarian situation here and developments are concerning,” Davutoglu told reporters after visiting a camp in Yayladagi, across from the town of Jisr al-Shughour.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
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Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia