Protect Syrian refugees with UN safe haven, urges Turkey

Turkey urged the United ­Nations to protect displaced Syrians yesterday but president Bashar al-Assad, waging a fierce civil war with rebels which has uprooted hundreds of thousands of people, dismissed talk of a buffer zone.

Opposition activists said air and ground bombardment killed at least 27 people in eastern Damascus, prompting thousands to flee.

Many more were killed when troops briefly entered several districts after the shelling and air strikes, carrying out summary executions before withdrawing, activists said.

Ankara now fears a mass influx such as the flight of half a million Iraqi Kurds into Turkey after the 1991 Gulf war, and has floated the idea of a “safe zone” under foreign protection within Syria for civilians fleeing the violence.

“We expect the UN to engage on the topic of protecting refugees inside Syria and if possible sheltering them in camps there,” foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.

France supports Turkey’s call for a safe zone in Syria, and pressure for action increased after the UN refugee agency said Syria’s exodus was accelerating. Up to 200,000 people could settle in Turkey if the conflict worsens, the UNHCR said.

Mr Davutoglu said refugee flows in the hundreds of thousands constituted a dangerous international problem.

But the United States and its allies have shown little enthusiasm for providing the military and aerial support to police a no-fly zone which Turkey’s proposal would require.

Meanwhile, Mr Assad, in his first television interview since a bomb attack killed four of his top security officials on 18 July, brushed off the idea of international intervention.

“I believe that talk about a buffer zone is not practical, even for those countries which are playing a hostile role,” he said,.

He also ridiculed Turkey, which once cultivated good relations with Mr Assad but turned against him over his violent response to the uprising in which at least 18,000 people have been killed.

“Will we go backwards because of the ignorance of some Turkish officials?” Mr Assad asked.

Turkey already hosts more than 80,000 refugees and the UN said up to 5,000 people a day had arrived there in the past two weeks. The refugee flow to Jordan has also doubled.

Mr Davutoglu spoke ahead of a UN Security Council meeting of foreign ministers expected to focus on Ankara’s proposal

“We are studying the issue of buffer zones,” said French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, who will chair today’s meeting in New York, acknowledging the issue was “complicated”.

Refugee flows to Turkey and Jordan have grown as fighting worsened around Syria’s northern city of Aleppo and across the southern province of Deraa, where anti-Assad protests first broke out, inspired by uprisings in other Arab countries. The revolt has slid into a civil war pitting Sunni Muslim rebels, backed by regional Sunni powers, against Mr Assad’s Alawite-led ruling system, supported by Shiite Iran.