|
Sharjah: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan yesterday vowed his country will not remain silent over
Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s “crimes”, as Washington
condemned a missile strike on Aleppo that left 58 dead.
“Every day a large number of innocent children and women fall dead
in Syria,” Erdogan, a key backer of Syria’s opposition, said in a
speech at a Sharjah forum.
“We will not remain silent on those
committing crimes against their people... We will not remain
silent on the brutal dictator in Syria,” Erdogan said at the
opening session of the 2nd Sharjah Government Communications (GCF)
Forum.
Turkey’s southern neighbor Syria has
been locked in a 23-months-long conflict in which the United
Nations estimates over 70,000 people have been killed.
Early in the revolt against Assad’s regime, Turkey broke ties with
Damascus and led international calls for his ouster.
Turkey has since backed the uprising
against Assad by offering shelter to defectors from Assad’s army
and hosting opposition meetings.
Some 200,000 Syrian refugees have
fled the conflict in their country for Turkey, many of them living
in insalubrious camps.
On February 15, Assad’s government
sent a letter to the United Nations blasting Turkey’s
“destructive” role in the Syrian conflict.
Erdogan’s statement came as the Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, updated its death toll
from a powerful missile attack on Friday on the northern city of
Aleppo, saying it killed at least 58 people, among them 36
children.
Washington condemned on Saturday “in
the strongest possible terms” Assad’s regime for the strike, which
activists say was carried out using surface-to-surface missiles.
The army’s deadly missile strikes
were “the latest demonstrations of the Syrian regime’s
ruthlessness and its lack of compassion for the Syrian people it
claims to represent”, said State Department spokeswoman Victoria
Nuland.
Nuland repeated Washington’s call
for Assad to step down. “The Assad regime has no legitimacy and
remains in power only through brute force,” Nuland said.
She added: “The United States sees
no indication that the brave Syrian people fighting against this
aggression will accept these regime leaders, with the blood of so
many Syrians on their hands, as part of a transition governing
authority.”
The comments from Washington came
after a statement from the main opposition Syrian National
Coalition (SNC) announcing a boycott of talks with world powers.
|
Comments
|
Quick links