Turkey said on Friday it might set up a "buffer zone" inside Syria to protect refugees fleeing President Bashar al-Assad's forces, raising the prospect of foreign intervention in the year-long revolt. With the uprising entering its second year, UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan urged the Security Council to end its divisions over Syria and work to help a peace mission mired in difficulty.
On the ground in Syria, the violence continued. Syrian forces battled protesters in at least three suburbs of the capital Damascus, opposition activists said. They were also flare-ups in other cities, with a number of deaths reported. Refugees were crossing hills into Turkey, evading Syrian forces and minefields to be taken into refugee camps there. The increasing flow, and memories of a flood of 500,000 fleeing into Turkey from Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War, are causing growing concern in Ankara.
Annan said he would dispatch advisors to Syria early next week for talks about sending international monitors, in the hope their presence would brake the violence. But Western diplomats had little expectation of any swift breakthroughs. The United Nations estimates that Assad's forces have killed at least 8,000 people, many of them civilians during the revolt, which has splintered Syria along sectarian lines and also deeply divided world powers.
While the West and much of the Arab world has lined up to denounce Assad, Russia, China and Iran have defended him and warned against outside interference. Neighbour Turkey, which has grown increasingly at odds with Assad, urged its citizens to quit Syria because of the growing insecurity and raised the prospect of setting up a buffer zone along the border to protect the swelling ranks of refugees.
"A buffer zone, a security zone, are things being studied," Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told reporters, adding that this was not the only proposal under consideration. It has made clear that any creation of a 'security zone' would need some form of international agreement and backing, not least because it would require armed protection and could profoundly alter the dynamics of the uprising.
Turkey says it is now hosting 14,700 Syrian refugees after 250 people crossed its borders on Friday. Some 1,000 had arrived the day before, fleeing fierce fighting in the Idlib province. Some 45 civilians have been killed in the Idlib region in the past day, including 23 whose bodies were found with their hands tied behind their backs, as well as five army deserters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
Annan, a former UN Secretary General, went to Damascus last weekend to discuss proposals to end the violence. Syria said it responded positively to the initiative, but Western diplomats have expressed pessimism about the chances of success. Addressing a closed-door meeting of the 15-nation Security Council via video link, Annan said the stronger their message was in support of his efforts to negotiate a ceasefire, the better his chances would be of altering the dynamics.