New Syrian crackdown; 1,000 flee to Turkey

GUVECCI, Turkey, June 23 (UPI) -- Nearly 1,000 Syrians fled into Turkey Thursday as elite Syrian forces backed by snipers and tanks stormed into the Khirbet al-Jouz border town, witnesses said.

Hundreds of terrified civilians fleeing the troops through the woods desperately broke through barbed wire to cross the border into Turkey, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph reported.

Many had been hiding in an informal camp in the deeply forested frontier near the border seeking shelter from the Assad regime's brutal crackdown on protests in the country's rural northwest, The New York Times reported.

Syria's feared Republican Guard, intended to protect top Syrian officials from external threats, and the army's elite 4th Armored Division, both commanded by Maher Assad, Syrian President Bashar Assad's brother, surged into the border town so close to Turkey that bursts of automatic gunfire were heard from the Turkish side of the border, the Telegraph said.

The offensive brought Syrian and Turkish troops into eye contact for the first time, heightening tensions between countries whose previously friendly relations have become "noxious," the newspaper said.

Turkey last week raised the possibility of a limited military incursion into northwestern Syria to protect civilians.

Turkish Red Crescent officials, including its president, surveyed the growing sea of refugees at a camp in Guvecci, Turkey, the Times and other news organizations said.

The camp is one of an increasing number of camps holding more than 10,000 refugees and administered by the organization, part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

While more than 10,000 refugees are in Turkey, some 17,000 others are "waiting at the borders," Turkish Red Crescent President Tekin Kucukali said.