BEIRUT - Syrian security forces riding in vehicles mounted with machine-guns raided neighbourhoods outside the capital, Damascus, before dawn Tuesday as Turkey's prime minister said he was concerned Syria could descend into a sectarian civil war.
Tuesday's raids were the latest assault on dissent in Syria as the regime tries to crush an uprising against President Bashar Assad's rule using deadly force that the UN estimates has killed 2,600 since March. But the protesters have refused to give in, setting the stage for a drawn-out stalemate.
"I fear that matters will end in civil war between the Alawites and the Sunnis," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Egyptian daily Al-Shorouk in Tuesday's edition.
Civil war is perhaps the most dire scenario facing Syria, a fragile jigsaw puzzle of Middle Eastern backgrounds. Syria's ruling elite belong to the minority Alawite sect, although the country of 22 million is mostly Sunni Muslim.
Erdogan addressed the Arab League in Cairo later Tuesday, telling Arab Foreign Ministers that the legitimate demands of the people in the region should not be repressed by force.
"In the future, we will see that this was the wrong path," he said.
Turkey is Syria's neighbor and important trade partner, but its leaders have grown increasingly frustrated with Damascus.
Activists said security forces carried out sweeping arrests and raids early Tuesday. The reports were carried by the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as well as the Local Coordination Committees, both of which have a wide network of sources on the ground.
Syria has banned foreign media and restricted local press, making it difficult to independently confirm the reports.
