DUBAI, Oct 21, (Agencies): Qatar, a major supporter of rebels in Syria’s civil war, suggested it could intervene militarily following Russia’s intervention in support of President Bashar al-Assad but said it still preferred a political solution to the crisis.

The comments by Qatar’s foreign minister, made in a CNN interview on Wednesday, drew a swift reply from Assad’s government with a senior official warning that Damascus would respond harshly to such “direct aggression”. Gulf Arab backers of Syrian rebels such as Qatar have been unsettled by Russia’s three-week-old air strike campaign that has allowed Assad’s forces to wrest back some territory to help secure his strongholds in western Syria. Qatar has been a leading supporter of anti-Assad rebel groups, providing arms and financial and political backing. Asked by CNN if Qatar supported the Saudi position that does not rule out a military option in Syria as a result of Russia’s intervention, Foreign Minister Khalid al-Attiyah said: “Anything that protects the Syrian people and Syria from partition, we will not spare any effort to carry it out with our Saudi and Turkish brothers, no matter what this is. “If a military intervention will protect the Syrian people from the brutality of the regime, we will do it,” he added, according to a text in Arabic carried by Qatar’s state news agency QNA.

In response, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad was quoted by Lebanon-based al-Mayadeen television as saying: “If Qatar carries out its threat to militarily intervene in Syria, then we will consider this a direct aggression ... Our response will be very harsh.” Meanwhile, Syria’s embattled President Bashar al-Assad travelled to Moscow for his first known foreign trip since the conflict broke out in his country in 2011, holding key talks on the crisis with President Vladimir Putin.

Assad, who last visited Russia in 2008, used the surprise visit on Tuesday evening to thank Putin for launching a campaign of air strikes in Syria last month, with the two leaders agreeing that military operations must be followed by political steps. Putin pledged to continue to support Damascus militarily, while calling for a political solution involving all groups to try to end the war, the Kremlin said as it announced the visit on Wednesday. Assad’s talks with one of his few remaining allies came the same day the United Nations said tens of thousands of people had fled new regime offensives in Syria. Assad told Putin the Russian air bombardments launched on Sept 30 — which have prompted an outcry in the West — had helped stop the spread of “terrorism” in his country, the Kremlin said. The strikes are reported to have killed 370 people so far, a third of them civilians, according to a monitoring group.

Russia insists the campaign is intended to target the extremist Islamic State group and others it describes as “terrorists”. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet on Friday in Vienna to discuss the Syrian conflict together with their counterparts from Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Moscow said Wednesday. Russia’s foreign ministry made the announcement after a phone call between Lavrov and Kerry. “The main focus was the situation in Syria in the context of preparations for  the meeting between the (Russian) minister and Secretary of State in Vienna on Oct 23 where they will be joined by Saudi and Turkish foreign ministers,” the ministry said in a statement. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan have discussed the surprise visit to Moscow of Syria’s embattled President Bashar al-Assad by telephone, the Kremlin said on Wednesday. “The situation in Syria has been discussed,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies. “In this context the leader of Russia informed his Turkish counterpart about the results of Syrian President Assad’s visit to Moscow.” The Turkish presidency confirmed the phone call. Turkish news agency Anatolia said Erdogan had expressed concern over the situation in Syria, adding that the two leaders were set to hold a meeting at a Group of 20 gathering in Antalya, Turkey next month. Syria’s Kurds have incorporated a mixed town they captured from the Islamic State group into territory they claim in the country’s north, a leading party said Wednesday. The move to bring the border town of Tal Abyad into the autonomous administration led by Kurdish forces in the country’s north and northeast comes as the Kurds work increasingly closely with Arab forces against President Bashar al- Assad’s regime. According to the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), Tal Abyad’s local council agreed Wednesday their town would be ruled by “autonomous administration, formally part of the autonomous administration in the Kobane canton.” The US and Russia on Tuesday put into practice new rules designed to minimize the risk of air collisions between military aircraft over Syria, while Iraqi leaders pledged they would not invite Russian airpower over their nation. Marine Gen Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Iraqis promised they will not request any Russian airstrikes or support for the fight against Islamic State militants. Shortly after leaving Baghdad, Dunford told reporters traveling with him that he had laid out a choice when he met with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al- Abadi and Defense Minister Khaled al- Obeidi earlier Tuesday. “I said it would make it very difficult for us to be able to provide the kind of support you need if the Russians were here conducting operations as well,” Dunford said. “We can’t conduct operations if the Russians were operating in Iraq right now.” The Islamic State group may dominate headlines about the destruction of heritage sites in Syria, but it is far from the only culprit, new US research warned Wednesday. The Syrian regime, Kurdishand other opposition forces are also major players in the destruction, according to the study led by a specialist in Middle East archaeology at Dartmouth University. The findings, published in the journal Near Eastern Archaeology, are based on analysis of satellite imagery from nearly 1,300 out of Syria’s estimated 8,000 archaeological sites.

Media attention “has led to a widespread misunderstanding that ISIS is the main culprit when it comes to looting,” said Jesse Casana, associate professor at Dartmouth, using another acronym for the IS group. “Using satellite imagery, our research is able to demonstrate that looting is actually very common across all parts of Syria.” The research found that more than 26 percent of sites were looted in regions held by Kurdish or other opposition groups. Around 21.4 percent of sites were looted in IS-controlled areas and 16.5 percent in Syrian regime areas. Turkey is prepared for a new wave of refugees from Syria following an offensive by regime forces and Russian aircraft which has displaced thousands of people, a government source said Wednesday. “We are ready for it if it happens. Preparations have been made to shelter them in the vicinity of Kilis,” a city in south-central Turkey near the border with Syria, a Turkish official told APF. A camp had been set up in the area by Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), he said. Russia has been bombing Syria since September 30 after President Bashar al- Assad requested help in his fight against rebels trying to oust him. The latest offensive has caused a mass exodus from Aleppo, according to the UN.

Among those fleeing are some 50,000 Turkmen heading for the Turkish border, media reports in Turkey said. Turkey switched its alliance from President Bashar al-Assad to the rebels at the outbreak of the civil war in 2011, and since then has taken in over 2.2 million Syrian refugees, some 250,000 of whom live in camps in the country’s south. On Sunday, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said they were worried the bombing campaign on Aleppo would spark a new exodus of refugees into Turkey and possibly onwards to Europe.