Syria army takes pounding as Turkey tensions rise

Syrian rebels have gone on the offensive killing more than 100 soldiers in two days, a watchdog said yesterday, as tension between Syria and Turkey escalated over cargo seized from a Syrian Air plane.
Fourteen soldiers died in an attack on an army post in the southern province of Daraa yesterday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, a day after the army suffered 92 losses, the highest daily total for the military of the 19-month conflict.
With an average of 20 deaths per day, the army has lost about 10,000 soldiers, with at least an equal number wounded, in the conflict, a military hospital official told AFP.
As fighting raged on the ground, including in the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, a war of words between Syria and Turkey grew angrier after Ankara said it had found military supplies on a passenger plane it intercepted en route between Moscow and Damascus.
The Syrian foreign ministry accused Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan of lying when he said the jet had been carrying "equipment and ammunition shipped to the Syrian defence ministry" from a Russian military supplier.
A Russian newspaper yesterday reported the plane was carrying Russian radar parts for Syrian missile defence systems but not weapons.
The plane was loaded with 12 boxes containing parts for radars used in the Syrian army's missile defence systems, Kommersant quoted sources in the arms export industry.
With tensions running high, Turkey scrambled a fighter jet yesterday after a Syrian helicopter shelled the rebel-held town of Azmarin inside Syria near the Turkish border, an official in Ankara told AFP.
Turkey's allies have warned of the risks embedded in the conflict between the neighbours, which have exchanged fire over their border in recent days, amid fears that the Syrian civil war could set off a regional conflagration.
The Britain-based Observatory said that Thursday had marked one of the deadliest days of fighting since an anti-regime revolt erupted in March last year, with at least 240 people killed across the country, including the 92 soldiers, 67 rebel fighters and 81 civilians.