More than 100 people were reported killed yesterday in violence across Syria, as Ankara downplayed the Syrian shooting down of a Turkish plane while President Bashar al-Assad formed a new cabinet with key posts unchanged.
Nato member Ankara acknowledged that one of its warplanes may have violated Syrian airspace after Damascus confirmed shooting down the F-4 Phantom on Friday, in comments seen as a bid to cool the latest spat between the former allies.
“An unidentified aerial target violated Syrian airspace, coming from the west at a very low altitude and at high speed over territorial waters,” a Syrian military spokesman told the official Sana news agency.
Anti-aircraft batteries hit the plane about a kilometre from the coast and it crashed some 10km off Latakia province, he added.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul said it was not unusual for warplanes flying at high speed to cross maritime borders, stressing that such actions were not “ill-intentioned”.
Naval forces from both nations were searching for the two missing crew.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 102 people, two-thirds of them civilians, were killed in violence across the country on Saturday as regime forces stepped up attacks on towns.
The Britain-based monitoring group said 69 civilians were killed in bombardment of rebel bastions, including a family of six in Deir Ezzor, eastern Syria.
Nineteen soldiers were killed in fighting with rebels, of whom four also died, the Observatory said, adding that 10 troops were gunned down as they tried to defect to anti-regime forces.
On Friday, at least 116 people were reported killed.
The International Committee of the Red Cross condemned the killing of a Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteer, in the fourth such incident in the country’s deadly unrest.
On the political front, Assad announced the formation of a new government with the key foreign, defence and interior ministry portfolios unchanged, less than two months after controversial parliamentary elections boycotted by the opposition.