Syrian troops amass near Turkish border

Syrian troops massed on the Turkish border overnight, witnesses said on Thursday, escalating tensions with Ankara as President Bashar Assad uses increasing military force to try to crush a popular revolt.

The Local Coordinating Committees, a Syrian activist group that tracks the protest movement, said that troops backed by tanks and snipers have entered Khirbet al-Jouz, a village along the Turkish border. The group cited residents on the ground in the village.

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AP Television News journalists on the Turkish side of the border saw armed men near the village and an armored personnel carrier on its outskirts. It was not possible to see inside the village to confirm the activists' reports.

Nearly 100 Syrians who were living in makeshift tents on the Syrian side of the border fled into Turkey as the village was surrounded and Turkey deployed guards along the frontier.

A Reuters photographer in the Turkish border village of Guvecci saw three uniformed Syrian soldiers with a machinegun positioned on the roof of a house on top of a hill. Syrian armored personnel carriers were visible on a road running along the top of the hill, and machinegun fire was heard although it was not clear who the troops were firing at.

Syria has banned foreign journalists and restricted local media, making it nearly impossible to independently confirm the accounts.

Day of mourning  

The opposition estimates 1,400 people have been killed and 10,000 detained in the crackdown, drawing international condemnation and sanctions.

Pro-democracy activists used Facebook to call for a general strike Thursday in all Syrian cites as a sign of mourning for the victims of the repression, and to mark the 100th day of the protest movement.

On Wednesday, the Syrian regime lashed out at European governments for threatening a new round of sanctions and accused the West of trying to sow chaos and conflict in the Arab nation.

But Foreign Minister Walid Moallem also reiterated the president's call for national dialogue and spoke of democracy over the horizon – a bold assertion after more than four decades of iron-fisted rule by the Assad family and months of bloody reprisals.

It was the regime's latest attempt to blunt three months of widespread demonstrations, a movement that was inspired by pro-democracy upheavals elsewhere in the Mideast. A skeptical opposition rejected the overture while the Syrian military is occupying towns and shooting protesters. Seven were reported killed on Tuesday.

The AP, Reuters and AFP contributed to the report

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