Thousands flee Syria in exodus, millions more need aid

ANKARA/DOHA (Reuters) - Thousands of Syrians fled their country on Friday in one of the biggest refugee exoduses of the 20-month civil war after rebels seized a border town, and the United Nations warned that millions more still in Syriawill need help as winter sets in.

In Qatar, the main opposition group outside Syria elected a new leader. However, it will start talks on Saturday with other factions, including representatives of rebels fightingPresident Bashar al-Assad's forces, on forming a wider body that hopes to gain international recognition as a government-in-waiting.

The U.N. said 11,000 refugees had fled in 24 hours, mostly toTurkey. The influx caused alarm in Ankara, which is worried about its ability to cope with such large numbers and has pushed hard, so far without success, for a buffer zone to be set up inside Syria where refugees could be housed.

Rebels overran the frontier town of Ras al-Ain late on Thursday, continuing a drive that has already seen them push Assad's troops from much of the north and seize several crossing points, a rebel commander and opposition sources said.

"The crossing is important because it opens another line to Turkey, where we can send the wounded and get supplies," said Khaled al-Walid, a commander in the Raqqa rebel division.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that compiles opposition activist reports, said at least 20 members of the Syrian security forces were killed when rebel fighters attacked a security headquarters in Ras al-Ain.

Thousands of residents poured out of the Arab and Kurd town, in the northeastern oil-producing province of Hasaka, 600 km (375 miles) from Damascus.

The Syrian National Council, the main opposition body outside the country, elected veteran activist George Sabra as its new head in Doha on Friday.

Sabra, a Christian, takes over a body that is under heavy criticism from international allies for being ineffective in the fight against Assad and for being riven by personal disputes.

Sabra appealed for arms to fight Assad's forces. "We need only one thing to support our right to survive and to protect ourselves: we need weapons, we need weapons," he told reporters.

Qatar, the United States and other powers are pressing the fractious Syrian opposition groups to come together and the SNC has agreed to open unity talks, although it fears its influence will be diluted in any new body.

Western countries and Syria's neighbors fear that hardline Islamist groups close to al Qaeda are growing in influence among rebels on the ground in Syria.

An outline agreement could see the SNC and other opposition figures agree on a 60-member political assembly, mirroring the Transitional National Council in Libya, which united opposition to Muammar Gaddafi last year and took power when he fell.

In Geneva, a senior U.N. official highlighted the plight of Syrians still in the country. An estimated four million people would need humanitarian aid by early next year when the country is in the grip of winter, up from 2.5 million now, said John Ging, director of operations at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

"Every day our humanitarian colleagues on the ground are engaging with people who are ever more desperate, ever more fearful for their lives and for the lives of their families because of this conflict," Ging told a news conference. "Since this crisis has begun we have not been able to keep pace with the increasing need."

The latest flight of refugees raised the total recorded by the U.N. to over 408,000 in Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq and North Africa.

TURKEY HITS OUT

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan hit out at world powers on the U.N. Security Council over their inaction.

"It is very strange. There are currently atrocities being committed in Syria and these atrocities are being directed by a state leader," he said. "How far will this go? When will the permanent members of the Security Council take responsibility?"

Turkey has responded in kind to mortar shells hitting its soil from fighting in Syria and is discussing with NATO allies whether to deploy Patriot air defense missiles on the border.

The Turkish state-run Anatolian news agency reported that 26 Syrian military officers had also arrived in Turkey with their families overnight in what it called the biggest mass desertion of senior soldiers from Assad's forces in months.

Advancing rebels fired mortars at the presidential palace in Damascus this week. Residents in the capital said security was being beefed up there. Assad told Russia Today television on Thursday he would "live and die in Syria", echoing words of other Arab leaders before they lost power last year.

In the last three months, the mainly Sunni Muslim Arab rebels have captured outposts on the Turkish border, moving towards the northeastern heartland of Syria's one million Kurds, many of whom have tried to stay clear of violence.

The Kurdish Council, a coalition of Kurdish parties opposed to Assad, called on rebels to pull their fighters out of Ras al-Ain, saying the clashes and fear of Syrian bombardment had prompted most of its 50,000 residents to flee.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, Tom Perry and Oliver Holmes in Beirut, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Andrew Hammond in Dubai and Regan Doherty in Doha; Writing by Peter Graff and David Stamp; Editing by Michael Roddy)

Suicide blasts in Syria kill at least 20 troops

BEIRUT (AP) — Suicide car bombings ripped through aSyrian government base in a southern city on Saturday, killing at least 20 soldiers, an opposition group said, the latest in a series of explosions targeting regime forces and symbols of state security across the country.

The explosions in Daraa were followed by clashes between regime forces and rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad, activists said.

Daraa was the birthplace of the uprising against Assad, which erupted in March 2011. The conflict began largely with peaceful protests against Assad's rule but morphed into a civil war after rebels took up arms in response to the regime's crackdown.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, said two suicide bombers drove their explosives-laden cars into a military encampment behind the officer's club in quick succession. It said at least 20 soldiers were killed, most in the second explosion.

Other activists described explosions that targeted the high security area but didn't say they were suicide attacks. State-run news agency SANA reported triple car bombings in Daraa that killed seven civilians and wounded several others.

The Syrian government rarely provides death tolls for security forces, and the discrepancy could not be reconciled or independently verified.

"I heard two very loud explosions and a third smaller one followed by bursts of gunfire," said Mohammad Abu Houran, an activist in Daraa. He said the first two were likely car bombs and the third a mortar shell or rocket-propelled grenade.

Abu Houran said black smoke could be seen over the high-security area, which was sealed off, and heavy shooting could be heard from the area for about 10 minutes after the explosions.

Bombings targeting state security institutions have become frequent in recent months, frequently hitting military intelligence branches in Damascus and other cities. Most dramatically in July, rebels detonated explosives inside a high-level crisis meeting in Damascus, killing four top regime officials, including Assad's brother-in-law and the defense minister.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Saturday's attack in Daraa, but Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaida-inspired extremist group that is fighting alongside the rebels, has said it was responsible for similar bombings in the past.

The targeted area is considered a high-security zone that houses a branch of the country's Military Intelligence as well as an officer's club where dozens of regime forces are based. Around 30 tanks that regime forces use to shell Daraa and surrounding areas are also stationed in a nearby stadium, activists said.

In other violence, Syrian TV said a locally made rocket slammed into a four-story residential building in the district of al-Qassaa in the capital of Damascus, wounding two young women. The TV blamed "terrorists" for the attack in the predominantly Christian residential area — the term used by the Syrian government to describe rebels.

Despite gaining control over large swaths of territory, particularly in the country's north,Syria's rebels are far outgunned by the military, which has increasingly relied on airstrikes against rebel strongholds.

The Syrian opposition, which is deeply divided and plagued by rivalries, says it needs weapons to break the military stalemate and defeat Assad. The rebels' Western backers have been reluctant to send weapons to the opposition fighters, for fear they will fall into the wrong hands.

George Sabra, the newly elected leader of the main opposition bloc, the Syrian National Council, urged the international community on Saturday to support rebels without any conditions.

"Unfortunately, we get nothing from them, except some statements, some encouragement" while Assad's allies "give the regime everything," Sabra told The Associated Press on the sidelines of a weeklong SNC conference in the Qatari capital of Doha.

Sabra was heading an SNC delegation Saturday in talks with rival opposition groups on forging a new, broader and more inclusive opposition leadership group — an idea promoted by Western and Arab backers of those trying to oust Assad.

Syria has dismissed the meeting in Doha, and Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi called it a political folly. In an interview on state-run Syrian TV aired late Friday, al-Zoubi said those who "meet in hotels" abroad are "deluding themselves" if they think they can overthrow the government.

Activists say more than 36,000 people have died in Syria during the nearly 20-month-old conflict, which has increasingly taken on sectarian overtones. The opposition consists of mainy Sunni Muslims, while the regime is dominated by Assad's minority Alawite sect, a Shiite offshoot..

Girl: She hid behind dad during Afghan massacre

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. (AP) — Little Robina took her seat wearing a deep-red head covering and a nervous smile, ready to tell her story. She giggled as any 7-year-old in the spotlight might.

But when the questions began, what she recalled seemed impossibly dark: how she hid behind her father when the gunman came to their village that night, how the stranger fired, and how her father died, cursing in pain and anger.

"I was standing behind my father," she testified simply, by video feed from AfghanistanSaturday night during a hearing for the soldier accused of killing 16 civilians, including nine children, in Kandahar Province. "He shot my father."

One of the bullets struck her in the leg, but she didn't realize it right away, she said.

Her testimony came on the second overnight session of the preliminary hearing for Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who prosecutors say slipped away from his base to attack two villages. The slayings drew such angry protests that the U.S. temporarily halted combat operations in Afghanistan, and it was three weeks before American investigators could reach the crime scenes.

The stories recounted by the villagers have been harrowing. They described torched bodies, a son finding his wounded father, and boys cowering behind a curtain while others screamed "We are children! We are children!"

Bales sat quietly throughout, betraying no reaction to what he heard.

Robina's friend, Zardana, now 8, also testified, but only briefly to describe what the shooter was wearing.

Zardana suffered a gunshot wound to the top of her head, and when she arrived at a nearby military base, the doctors focused on treating the other injured victims first. They figured Zardana had no chance of surviving.

After two months at a military hospital in Afghanistan and three more at a Navy hospital in San Diego, she can walk and talk again.

Before she testified, Zardana sat at the witness table sipping from a pink juice box through a pink straw. A loose head covering and a barrette held her dark brown hair out of her face.

The hearing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord is meant to help determine whether Bales, 39, will face a court-martial in the deaths. He could face the death penalty if he is convicted.

The Ohio native and father of two from Lake Tapps, Wash., has not entered a plea and was not expected to testify. His attorneys have not discussed the evidence, but say he has post-traumatic stress disorder and suffered a concussive head injury while serving in Iraq.

The Afghan witnesses recounted the villagers who lived in the attacked compounds and listed the names of those killed, to provide a record of the lives lost. The bodies were buried quickly under Islamic custom, and no forensic evidence was available to prove the number of victims.

Sadiquallah, a slight boy of about 13 or 14 whose head rose just above his chair at the witness table, described being awakened by a neighbor screaming that an American had "killed our men."

He said he and another boy, Zardana's brother, ran to hide in a storage room and ducked behind a curtain. It provided no protection from the bullet that grazed his head and fractured his skull. Sadiquallah said the shooter had a gun and a light, but he could not identify the man.

The other child was hit in the thigh and also survived. That boy, Rafiullah, testified Saturday that an American had attacked them and put a gun in his sister's mouth.

His father, Samiullah, was away when the shootings occurred, and testified that by the time he returned the next morning, his two wounded children had been driven to a base for treatment. He found his mother among the four corpses at the compound.

"I just saw her, I cried, and I could not look on her face," he said.

Prosecutors said that in between his attacks, Bales woke a fellow soldier, reported what he'd done and said he was headed out to kill more. The soldier testified that he didn't believe what Bales said, and went back to sleep.

During cross-examination of several witnesses Saturday, Bales' attorney, John Henry Browne, sought to elicit testimony about whether there might have been more than one shooter.

One Army Criminal Investigations Command special agent testified that several months after the massacre, she took a statement from one woman whose husband was killed. The woman reported that there were two soldiers in her room — one took her husband out of the room and shot him, and the other held her back when she tried to follow.

But other eyewitnesses reported that there was just one shooter, and several soldiers have testified that Bales returned to his base at Camp Belambay, just before dawn, alone and covered in blood.

A video taken from a surveillance blimp also captured a sole figure returning to the base.

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Diplomats say US-backed Mideast nuclear talks called off over Arab-Israeli rifts

VIENNA - Diplomats say proposed high-level talks between Israel and its Muslim neighbours on a Mideast free of weapons of mass destruction have been called off.

The diplomats said the U.S., one of the organizers, would likely make a formal announcement soon, stating that with tensions in the region high, "the time was not opportune" for such a gathering.

The meeting, to be held in Helsinki by year's end, was on shaky ground since it was agreed to in 2010 by the 189 member nations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The decision to scrap it cast doubt on the significance of the NPT conference and its attempts every five years to advance nonproliferation.

The diplomats demanded anonymity Saturday because they were not authorized to divulge the cancellation ahead of the formal announcement.

Israel drawn into Syria fighting for first time