Syrian army in firefight with defectors near Damascus

Reuters/Arab News:

Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad fought gun battles overnight near a northeast Damascus suburb with army defectors who had refused to shoot at a pro-democracy protest, residents said on Sunday.

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Dozens of soldiers defected and fled into Al-Ghouta, an area of orchards and farmland, after pro-Assad forces fired at a large crowd of demonstrators near the Damascus suburb of Harasta to prevent them from marching on the capital, residents said.

“The army has been firing heavy machine guns throughout the night at Al-Ghouta and they were being met with response from smaller rifles,” a resident of Harasta told Reuters by phone.

It was the first reported defection around the capital, where Assad’s core forces are based.

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Activists have been reporting increasing defections among the rank-and-file army, mostly drawn from Syria’s Sunni majority but dominated by an Alawite officer core effectively under the command of Assad’s brother Maher.

A statement published on the Internet by the Free Officers, a group that says it represents defectors, said “large defections” occurred in Harasta and security forces and shabbiha (militiamen) loyal to Assad were chasing the defectors.

The statement said that a colonel in Air Force Intelligence, who had been in charge of raids and arrests by the secret police, was hit by a bullet in his head in the nearby suburb of Saqba.

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It will take more such defections to stop the killings of the Syrian people. But it is a start. I suspect these defectors can get some help from Turkey which has become fed up with the Assad despots.