BEIRUT, (Reuters) – Gunmen stormed a pro-government Syrian TV channel headquarters on Wednesday, bombing buildings and shooting dead three employees, state media said, in one of the boldest attacks yet on a symbol of the authoritarian state.
More than 150 people were killed in fierce fighting across Syria on Wednesday, 86 of them civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Intensified fighting in the country have driven up the death toll averages to around 100 people per day in the past week.
President Bashar al-Assad declared late on Tuesday that his country was “at war”. U.S. intelligence officials said the Syrian government was “holding fairly firm” and digging in for a long struggle against rebel forces who are getting stronger.
The dawn attack on Ikhbariya television’s offices, 20 km (15 miles) south of the capital, as well as overnight fighting on the outskirts of Damascus showed the 16-month-old violence now rapidly encroaching on the city.
Ikhbariya resumed broadcasting shortly after the attack, which killed three journalists and four security guards, displaying bullet holes in its two-storey concrete building and pools of blood on the floor. One building was almost entirely destroyed.
“I heard a small explosion then a huge explosion and gunmen ran in. They ransacked the offices and entirely destroyed the newsroom,” an employee who works at the offices in the town of Drousha told state media at the scene.
Syrian media are tightly regulated by the Ministry of Information. Although Ikhbariya is privately owned, opponents of Assad say it is a government mouthpiece.
After Tuesday’s fighting unprecedented in its intensity around Damascus, violence appeared to ease off around the capital following the attack on the television complex. But rebel forces were clearly becoming stronger and more ambitious.
SYRIA “AT WAR”
During the pro-democracy revolt against the Assad family’s four-decade rule, Ikhbariya has been pushing to counter what it says is a campaign of misinformation by Western and Arab satellite channels on the uprising that began in March 2011.
“We live in a real state of war from all angles,” Assad told a cabinet he appointed on Tuesday, in a speech broadcast on state television. “When we are in a war, all policies and all sides and all sectors need to be directed at winning this war.”
The declaration marks a change of rhetoric from Assad, who had long dismissed the uprising against him as the work of scattered militants in “terrorist gangs” funded from abroad.
The rambling speech – Assad also commented on subjects as far afield as the benefits of renewable energy – left little room for compromise. He denounced the West, which “takes and never gives, and this has been proven at every stage”.
International mediator Kofi Annan said he had convened a ministerial-level meeting on Syria in Geneva on Saturday with the aim of seeking an end to the violence and agreeing on principles for a “Syrian-led political transition”.
In a statement, the joint United Nations-Arab League envoy said he had invited foreign ministers from the five major powers – Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States – as well as Turkey, the European Union, Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar.
Despite the deterioration in Syria, so far there has been no sign of an appetite for full-scale Western intervention. However, last week’s shooting down of a Turkish warplane by Syrian air defences has focused attention on a volatile situation on Turkey’s southeastern border with Syria.
“We will not refrain from teaching a lesson to anyone trying to test Turkey’s greatness,” Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday, referring to the incident near the countries’ maritime borders.
Turkey’s land border territories, hosting over 33,000 refugees and units of the rebel Free Syria Army (FSA), are quickly becoming a potential flashpoint. Tuesday’s comments by Erdogan may if anything have added further uncertainty to the situation there.
Erdogan said on Tuesday that Syrian military elements approaching the border and posing a threat would be deemed a military target. He made no public clarification of new terms of engagement issued to troops.
“With Tayyip Erdogan’s announcement, and if Syria complies with it, Turkey will have by itself declared a de facto ‘buffer zone’,” Radikal newspaper columnist Cengiz Candar wrote.
“And if Bashar al-Assad doesn’t comply with this? That is, if he continues to send soldiers right up to the border? Turkey runs the risk of a military operation against him.”
Turkey has in the past spoken of possible establishment of a ‘humanitarian corridor’ on Syrian soil – a venture that would inevitably require armed protection. But it has always insisted such a measure, if required by a rising tide of refugees or by evidence of massacres, would need international
