Russia compares Syria violence to 'civil war'

Russia has warned that the situation in Syria is starting to resemble a civil war after an attack by Syrian army defectors on a Damascus air force base, urging the Arab League to call on all sides to halt violence.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters on Thursday that the West and the Arab League should not just single out President Bashar al-Assad over the violence, but also urge restraint from the opposition.

"Today I saw a television report about some new so-called rebel Free Syrian Army organising an attack on the government building, on the building belonging to Syria's armed forces," he told reporters.

"This was quite similar to a true civil war."

The Free Syrian Army attacked the air base in the suburbs of the capital on Wednesday in one of their boldest assaults so far against government security forces.

Commenting on Lavrov's statement, Mark Toner, the US state department spokesperson, said: "If [Russia] characterizes it as a civil war, we view that it is very much the Assad regime carrying out a campaign of violence, intimidation and repression against innocent protesters."

As violence continued in the country on Thursday, the Local Co-ordination Committees activist network reported that at least 10 people were shot dead by security forces, including six civilians, four defected soldiers.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Syrian troops have made sweeping arrests in the flashpoint province of Hama.

The UK-based rights organisation also said that security forces killed a nine-year-old girl during a search operation in the town of Subkhan, in the eastern oil hub of Deir ez-Zor.

European pressure

The latest reports of violence came as a German official said that diplomats from Germany, France and Britain would present a resolution to the UN General Assembly condemning human rights abuses by the Syrian government for a vote expected next Tuesday.

The German UN mission spokesman said that the resolution has support from key Arab countries.

Toner said that the US would also support it.

Its passing could increase pressure on the UN Security Council to act over the Syria crisis.

Russia and China last month vetoed a council resolution condemning the deadly crackdown on the eight-month-old uprising which the UN says has caused at least 3,500 deaths.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday criticised the international community for remaining indifferent to the events in Syria because the country is not rich in oil.

"The silence and indifference of those who spoke out against Libya to the massacres in Syria create irreparable wounds on the human conscience," Erdogan said at an international energy conference in Istanbul.

Erdogan also called for more action to stop the bloodshed.

'Turkish intervention'

Erdogan's comments came just after the leader of Syria's exiled Muslim Brotherhood said that his compatriots would accept Turkish "intervention" in the country to resolve months of bloody unrest.

"The Syrian people would accept intervention coming from Turkey, rather than from the West, if its goal was to protect the people," Mohammad Riad Shakfa, Syria's Muslim Brotherhood leader, said in Istanbul.

On Wednesday, the Arab League threatened economic sanctions if the government continued to violate an Arab-brokered peace plan during a meeting of league foreign ministers in the Moroccan capital of Rabat.

The Arab League is "giving the Syrian government three days to stop the bloody repression" of its civilian population, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, the Qatari foreign minister.

"But if Damascus does not agree to co-operate with the League, sanctions will be adopted against Syria."

Sheikh Hamad said that Arab patience with Assad's government was running out, but that it still had time.

Syria's ambassador to the US, Imad Mustafa, said on Thursday that Damascus was looking into an Arab League proposal to send monitors to Syria to protect civilians.

"We will positively address matters that serve Syria's interests," he told Lebanon-based Al Manar Television.

Source: Agencies