Assad’s forces kill four deserters as China voices concern over events in Syria

Syrian security forces shot dead four soldiers trying to desert on Monday, as troops deployed in several villages and China voiced concern over events in Syria.

“Four soldiers in Maar Shamsa in (northwestern) Idlib were shot dead while trying to flee the Wadi Deif military camp,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, reporting gunfire, arrests and murders over the weekend and on Monday across the country.

Meanwhile, China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi highlighted his country’s concern about Syria in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly.

In a marked call to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and opposition demonstrators, Yang said “we hope that parties in Syria will exercise restraint, avoid any form of violence or more bloodshed and conflict, and act quickly to ease tension.”

The international community should “handle the Syrian issue in a prudent way so as to prevent further turbulence in Syria and its repercussions on regional peace,” Yang said.

China has joined Russia in leading opposition to U.N. sanctions against the Assad government in Syria, where the United Nations says that more than 2,700 people have been killed since March.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged China to back strong U.N. action on Syria when she met Yang just before his speech, a senior U.S. official said.

And a global human rights group urged a U.N. probe into the killing of Syrian civilians and slammed the “timidity” in tackling the crisis amid evidence of crimes against humanity.

“We are demanding an international investigation to document exactly what is happening and really identify the problems -- an independent investigation by the United Nations because this can’t continue,” Khadija Cherif, secretary general of the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights, told AFP in Warsaw.

“We must do this, or we’ll continue to see this kind of timidity in the reaction to what is happening in Syria,” Cherif said, at once warning there was “certainly no need for an armed intervention” similar to the NATO-led air strikes in Libya.

On the ground in Syria, the Britain-based Observatory also reported soaring tensions in central Homs province, a hub of protests against the Assad regime.

“Tension is high in Homs province. The army has deployed in the villages of the Qusseir region (south of Homs), where two unidentified bodies were found in the Assi river.”

“There are also mutilated bodies at the National Hospital” in Qusseir, where 12 people were killed and 15 were reported missing in military operations on Saturday, the Observatory said.

North of Homs, “many security checkpoints have been set up on the roads leading to Rastan, where heavy machine-gun fire was heard this morning,” the rights group added.

The deputy dean of the faculty of architecture at Al-Baath University in Homs, Mohammed Ali Aqil, was killed on Monday by unknown assailants, the Observatory reported.

In northwestern Idlib province near the Turkish border, the military and security forces stormed villages east of the city of Saraqeb, setting up roadblocks and arresting 17 people.

The Observatory also said that in the rebel city of Hama, “a civilian died and three others were wounded by gunfire on Sunday night on the Mhardeh-Hilfaya road.”

The bodies of four civilians who went missing on September 16 at Hilfaya in Hama province were also returned to their families.

In the southern city of Dael in Daraa province, where the first protests ignited in mid-March, intense gunfire was heard throughout the night after the city council building was set on fire, which residents blamed on pro-regime militias.

Students staged demonstrations in several Daraa cities, the Observatory added.

Meanwhile, the state-run SANA news agency reported the seizure of “arms and ammunition” in a house in the Daraa village of Nassib near the Jordanian border, and the discovery of a carload of “Israeli arms and explosives charges in Homs.”

SANA also reported the funeral of four soldiers and security officers, as well as that of a doctor who had been killed in Homs.

Damascus does not accept the existence of popular opposition to the authorities, instead blaming “armed gangs” and “terrorists” for trying to sow chaos.

Syria remains formally at war with Israel, which occupied the Golan Heights during the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict.

Homs, together with Idlib, has traditionally provided the bulk of majority Sunni conscripts in the military, which is led by officers from Assad’s minority Alawite sect.

The two regions have been the scene of some of the biggest street protests against Assad in the last few weeks.

The military crackdown has killed at least 2,700 people, including 100 children, according to the United Nations. Syrian authorities say 700 police and army have been killed during the unrest which they blame on “terrorists” and “mutineers”.

Syria has barred most foreign media, making it difficult to verify accounts by authorities and activists.

The domestic turmoil and Western sanctions have taken a sharp toll on the economy, which the International Monetary Fund has forecast will shrink 2 percent this year –a sharp revision from a previous estimate of 3 percent growth.

The government is planning to raise spending in next year’s budget by nearly 60 percent to $27 billion, with more than a quarter of that money going on social support including energy and agriculture subsidies, the state news agency said.

It gave few details and did not say where the funding for the extra spending would come from. Businessmen say authorities have banned most imports except for raw materials and grains in an effort to preserve foreign currency reserves.