Ankara (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The scheduled Syrian flight blocked and forced to land in Ankara on suspicion of carrying weapons on board has departed. The Syrian Airlines Airbus A320 was traveling from Moscow to Damascus with only 35 passengers - despite having a capacity of 180 people - and two crew members. Yesterday evening, two Turkish jets escorted the flight to Esenboga airport (Ankara), where military personnel carried out security checks. The Turkish authorities have seized some unspecified equipment, then released the plane and passengers around 2:30 am (local time).
The tension between the two
countries has been rekindled in the last week, after a missile fired from
Syrian soil killed
a Turkish family of five, who lived in a small town just one mile from the
border. In
response, the Turkish armed forces bombed some locations close to the Syrian
border. To
calm the situation, Damascus apologized
for the death of the family, calling the attack "a tragic accident."
From
Athens, where he is on an official visit, the Turkish Minister of Foreign
Affairs Ahmet Davutoglu said: "We have received information about a plane,
carrying a cargo with that does not comply by the rules of civil aviation. We are determined to control weapons
transfers to a regime [the Syrian] that carries out such brutal
massacres against civilians. " Davutoglu stated that "Turkey does not
want a war with Syria," but "it is unacceptable that such transfers
take place using our airspace."
Through the national agency Interfax, Moscow reported that half of
the passengers aboard the freighter were Russian citizens, including children. Yelena
Krylova, Russian Vnukovo airport spokesman, said that "once a week Syrian
Airline flights depart from Moscow to Damascus. Airbus A320 took off in the
normal way, without incident"
Turkey
is home to about 100 thousand Syrian refugees, including several members of the
rebel Free Syrian Army. According
to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (based in Britain), in 19 months of
fighting there were at least 30 thousand victims. Of these, many are children.
Ankara's
intervention in the conflict between the army of Bashar al-Assad and the rebel
Free Syrian Army, is due to the involvement of Kurdish separatists in the
Kurdish-majority areas in Turkey and Syria. According
to Ankara, the regimes in Damascus and Tehran have formed an alliance with the Turkish
separatist PKK and its Iranian and Syrian branches to create chaos in the region
and limit the movements of the rebels of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) supported
by Turkey.