Syrians flee into Turkey to evade crackdown

More than 1,500 Syrians have fled to Turkey to escape a feared army crackdown, officials said on Thursday, in another sign that president Bashar al-Assad's struggle with protesters is disturbing Syria's neighbours.
With Western public opinion startled by the bloodshed that has met Syrians' efforts to emulate other Arabs in casting off autocratic rule, Britain and France have asked the UN Security Council to condemn Assad - though world powers have shown no appetite for any Libya-style military intervention.
Residents in the area said about 40 tanks and troop carriers had deployed about 7 km from Jisr al-Shughour, a northwestern town of 50,000 where authorities say 'armed gangs' killed more than 120 security personnel earlier this week.
Other accounts speak of a mutiny among troops who refused to fire on civilians after a pro-democracy rally in the town on Friday. Loyalist military units then attacked the mutineers.
Syria has barred most independent media from the country, making it difficult to verify accounts of the violence.
'Jisr al-Shughour is practically empty. People were not going to sit and be slaughtered like lambs,' said one refugee who had crossed into Turkey, who gave his name as Mohammad.
'Demonstrations in the villages are still going on. Women and children are carrying flowers and shouting 'people want the downfall of the regime',' he said.
A spokesman for the UN refugee agency said 1,577 Syrians had arrived in Turkey in the last 24 hours and were sheltering in a tent encampment just north of the border at Yayladagi.
Thousands more people from Jisr al-Shughour have fled to villages on the Syrian side of the border, residents say. 'Syria is causing concern for us,' the Turkish prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, said on Turkish radio, putting the number of refugees at 1,200 since Wednesday. 'We will always keep our doors open to our Syrian brothers and sisters.'
Russia says opposed to any UN Syria resolution
Russia said that it opposed any UN Security Council resolution on Syria, stepping up its threat to veto a Western-backed draft condemning the country's crackdown on protesters.
‘Russia is against any UN Security Council resolution on Syria,’ Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told journalists at a briefing in Moscow.
Britain, France, Germany and Portugal have floated a new resolution condemning Syria at the UN Security Council as the United States and its allies seek to raise the pressure on Syria to end its violent crackdown on anti-government protesters.
MD.NURUL KADER. BANGLADESH.