293 Syrian Soldiers, Families Desert Assad
Eighty-five Syrian soldiers, including a general and 14 other officers, fled into Turkey overnight with more than 200 family members, Turkish news media said.
The defections — the largest single-day exodus from Syrian President Bashar Assad’s army — came as Syrian opposition figures gathered in Cairo to devise a unified strategy for pressuring Assad to step down as part of a solution to the 16-month-old bloody conflict the United Nations says has led to more than 10,000 deaths.
Some rebel groups and observers put the death toll at more than 14,000.
The defectors entered the town of Reyhanli in southern Turkey’s Hatay Province as part of a group of 293 refugees “fleeing atrocities in Syria,” Turkish state TV channel TRT Haber, the state-run Anadolu Agency and the independent English-language Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman reported.
Reyhanli, on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, has a large Sunni Arab population, in contrast with most of Hatay, whose Arab population are mostly Alawite. The Assad regime is made up of members of the country’s minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The majority of Syrians are Sunni Muslims.