AMMAN, Sept 28, (Agencies): Tanks pounded a Syrian town that has become a refuge for army deserters for a second day on Wednesday, residents said, in the first major battle with defecting soldiers since a six-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad began.
At least 1,000 deserters and armed villagers have been fighting tank- and helicopter-backed forces trying to regain control of Rastan, a town of 40,000, in central Syria.
“They have got a foothold in the southern part of Rastan, but the Free Syrian Army is fighting back and has destroyed three armoured vehicles,” said one resident by satellite phone.
“Buildings have caught fire in several neighborhoods from tank fire,” he said from the town, which lies about 180 km (112 miles) north of Damascus, among farmland and wheat fields on the Orontes River and on the northern highway leading to Aleppo.
Syrian authorities have not commented on the assault, but in the past they have denied any army defections, blaming “foreign meddling” for the turmoil in the country of 20 million.
It was impossible to verify which side has the military upper hand in Rastan — Syria has barred most international media from the country — but one Western diplomat said it was “highly possible” that defectors were holding their ground.
After months of mostly peaceful anti-Assad protests, army deserters unwilling to shoot at demonstrators have formed themselves into rebel units, of uncertain size, mostly in Syria’s agricultural heartland around the city of Homs.
The area is a recruiting ground for Sunni conscripts who provide most of manpower in the military, which is dominated by officers from Assad’s minority Alawite sect, and in better equipped core units commanded by his younger brother Maher.
Homs and its environs have seen some of the biggest street protests against Assad, as well as some of the heaviest assaults in a crackdown that has killed 2,700 people, by a UN count.
“The (army) defections are occurring in the regions where the killings are most severe. For every Syrian the regime kills, it is creating 10 opponents,” one activist said.
“The problem is that the defectors have nowhere to go. There is no safe haven or outside backing for them,” he said.
In another outbreak of armed opposition to Assad, people in the nearby city of Homs said rebel soldiers had hit a government tank with a rocket-propelled grenade on Tuesday. The attack occurred in the Bayada district, home to desert tribesmen who are among Assad’s fiercest foes in the city of one million.
Activists in Homs, Syria’s third largest city, said at least six inhabitants were killed in raids by security forces.
Several doctors and professor have been assassinated in Homs in the past few weeks by what the authorities call “terrorists”.
The Local Coordination Committees and other activist groups, said the authorities were behind the killings to stoke sectarian strife in the city, which has a significant Alawite minority.
Syrian authorities say “armed terrorist groups” are responsible for civilian deaths in the past six months of unrest and have also killed 700 members of the security forces.
Sanctions
Turkey is preparing sanctions against Syria, a former ally, in a policy shift that aligns Ankara more closely with the West and complements a Turkish arms embargo already in place.
Ankara has said the sanctions, expected to be unveiled within days after Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan visits border camps sheltering more than 7,000 Syrians who have fled the violence, will target Assad’s government, not the Syrian people.
Officials say the measures will affect military, banking and energy ties between the formerly friendly countries.
“Turkey is reverting to the US and European line on Syria,” said foreign policy expert Semih Idiz. “The relationship with Syria has collapsed and it is heading for a freeze.”
Britain, France, Germany and Portugal plan to circulate a draft UN resolution that condemns Syria, but drops calls for immediate sanctions against it, diplomats said on Tuesday.
The UN Security Council is trying again to reach agreement on a resolution condemning the violence in Syria, but members remain deeply divided over sanctions against President Bashar Assad’s regime.
The Europeans and Russians have revised their rival texts which the council is expected to discuss Wednesday afternoon.
It took four months for the deadlocked council to finally issue a statement in August condemning the escalating violence in Syria. The Europeans, backed by the United States, quickly tried to press for a resolution calling for an immediate arms embargo and other sanctions aimed at stopping the government’s ongoing crackdown on opposition protesters.
But their initial draft resolution, circulated in late August, faced opposition from Russia, China, India, South Africa and Brazil, partly because they fear that it may be used as a pretext for armed intervention against Syria. They argue that the UN resolution authorizing the use of force to protect civilians in Libya has been misused by NATO to justify months of air strikes against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, and now its remnants.
Meanwhile, the Syrian government and regime opponents blamed each other Wednesday for the murder of a nuclear engineer, the latest death among scientists in the flashpoint city of Homs.
Meanwhile, Western powers dropped calls for sanctions against Damascus at the UN Security Council in the face of veto threats from China and Russia, even as existing curbs began to affect Syria’s economy.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said “nuclear engineer Aws Abdel Karim Khalil was killed this morning (Wednesday) by unknown attackers.”
State news agency SANA said Khalil was “shot in the head by a terrorist group as his wife was driving him to work” at the university.
In the same city, unidentified attackers killed Mohamed Ali Aqil, deputy rector of the architecture faculty at Al-Baath University, and Nael Dakhil, director of the military petrochemical school on Tuesday.
And on Sunday, a surgeon at Homs’ general hospital, Hassan Eid, was gunned down as he got into his car.
The authorities said the four were killed by “terrorists.”

Bahrain
A Bahraini special court has upheld life jail sentences served on seven Shiite opposition leaders convicted of plotting to overthrow the regime in the Gulf kingdom, BNA official news agency said.
Jail sentences against seven other activists, ranging between two to 15 years and including Sunni opposition leader Ibrahim Sharif, were also upheld by the national safety appeals court, it said, quoting military general prosecutor Colonel Yusof Fulaifel.
Seven others, one sentenced to life in jail and the remainder to 15 years, remained at large and had not appealed against their sentences.
The appealed verdicts will go to a civil court of cassation for a final decision.
The eight activists sentenced to life include Hassan Mashaima, head of the Shiite opposition Haq movement, Abdulwahab Hussein, who leads the Shiite Wafa Islamic Movement, and Shiite human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who is also a Danish citizen.
Activist and Haq member Abduljalil al-Singace, who was released in February after six months in jail, was also sentenced to life.
The other four are Mohammed Habib al-Muqdad, who holds a Swedish passport; his cousin Abduljalil al-Muqdad and Saeed Mirza, both of whom are Wafa members, and Said Abdulnabi Shihab, who was sentenced in absentia.
Sharif, the Sunni leader of the Waed secular group, who played a prominent role in month-long protests for democratic reform that were crushed in March, received a five-year sentence.
He and other leading opposition figures were arrested amid the Sunni authorities’ crackdown on the protests which were led by the islands’ Shiite majority.
Nine of the defendants had been in custody on similar charges in the past before being set free under a royal pardon in February aimed at calming the protests.
The Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights condemned the court’s ruling.
“We deeply regret the judgements,” Khadija Sharif, the organisation’s assistant secretary general, told AFP after the rulings were handed down on Wednesday.
Sharif said the convictions were “arbitrary” and “inequitable” and called on the Bahraini courts to release the prisoners.
Meanwhile, more than 200 Iranian lawmakers issued a joint statement on Wednesday criticising what they called Saudi Arabia’s “role” in suppressing protests in Bahrain and Yemen, the parliament’s website reported.
“The killing of innocent people in these two countries, in light of Saudi Arabia’s role, shows the weakness of the governments,” in Manama and Sanaa, said the statement signed by 210 MPs of the 290-seat parliament.
The statement called on the United Nations to send a delegation and investigate the human rights situation and to “stop Saudi Arabia’s interference in the internal affairs” of the two countries.
The lawmakers also denounced “the West’s silence” in the face of “savage suppression.”
Iran has vocally supported most uprisings in the Arab world, with the exception of the revolt in its regional ally Syria, where it backs the regime of President Bashar al-Assad while advocating reforms.
Tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia rose sharply in March when Saudi troops intervened in Bahrain to help the Gulf kingdom’s Sunni ruling family suppress month-long protests led by its Shiite majority community.
The Saudi intervention triggered angry protests from Tehran, also heightening tensions with other Gulf monarchies.
Iran has also slammed the Riyadh-backed crackdown on protesters in Yemen.
Yemen
Tribesmen fighting Yemeni troops loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh shot down Wednesday an army fighter jet, as a sea of protesters demanded the under-fire leader’s ouster and trial.
A Sukhoi SU-22 “fell during a regular mission” and opposition leaders were “responsible for the incident,” said a military spokesman quoted by Saba state news agency.
Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated near Sanaa’s Change Square, the focal point of anti-regime protests in the violence-wracked Arabian Peninsula country, an AFP correspondent reported.
“We shall not rest until the butcher is executed,” the demonstrators chanted as they marched in a neighbourhood of the capital controlled by dissident General Ali Muhsen al-Ahmar’s First Armoured Division.
Security forces loyal to Saleh blocked the road leading to government offices beyond Qiyadah roundabout, forcing the protest to stay within the area controlled by the defected division.
Demonstrations also took place in the cities of Taez, Hudayda and Ibb, but all ended peacefully, witnesses said.
The fighter jet was downed by anti-aircraft guns near Arhab, 40 kilometres (26 miles) north of Sanaa, where armed tribesmen have been locked in combat with the elite Republican Guard, led by Saleh’s son Ahmed, witnesses said.
“We saw the downed plane in flames on the ground,” one witness said.
Tribesmen captured the pilot after he ejected when the plane crashed in the village of Beit Azar, tribal sources said.
The tribal area of Arhab has been targeted by heavy air strikes since a general and six other soldiers were killed Sunday in clashes between tribesmen and the Republican Guard.
General Abdullah al-Kulaibi, head of the 63rd brigade of the elite Republican Guard unit, died in the attack by tribesman opposed to Saleh’s rule in the strategic town of Nihm, the defence ministry said.
Four of the attackers were killed during the assault on the military base, about 60 kms (40 miles) from the Yemeni capital, it said.
Tribal sources claimed on Monday that 33 troops were captured in the confrontation.
Meanwhile, three more gunmen were killed in overnight clashes with the guard, tribal sources said.
Nihm is one of several villages and towns that collectively make up the strategic northern gateway into Sanaa and is site of at least five Republican Guard bases.
The elite unit has so far prevented dissident General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, who now controls part of the capital, from calling in reinforcements from Yemen’s northern provinces where parts of his division are deployed.
The tribesmen who carried out the assault on the military base late Sunday are allied with General Ahmar and have been battling government troops for control of the area.
Saleh, who is under international pressure to relinquish power and allow new elections, returned to the country last week, sparking violence in which scores have died.
The 69-year-old president has repeatedly refused to sign a power transfer deal brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council under which he would hand power to Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi in return for immunity from prosecution.
Youth groups said they plan to march Thursday from their encampment at Change Square in the north of Sanaa to the southern part of the city which hosts the Saleh’s residence.
“There will be an escalation during the coming two days. The youths will march... to Hedda Street, where the president’s residence is,” Walid al-Amari, a leading activist from the youth revolution committee, told AFP.
He said protesters wanted to march peacefully and have asked the leadership of the defected First Armoured Division not to provide any armed protection that could provoke Saleh loyalists.
“We have asked the troops of the First Division not to accompany us,” he said.