SYRIAN Government snipers shot at troops to force them to open fire on peaceful protesters holding olive branches, a defecting soldier said.

Darwish Mohammed Fidou, 22, a reservist Syrian soldier called up for duty last month, said he deserted his unit after it was ordered to shoot at unarmed civilians in the city of Homs.

"They told us that there are gangs who are trying to kill people," Fidou told UK newspaper The Times after crossing to the Turkish border village of Guvecci.



"When we went on the streets we were surprised that the gangs the general talked about were just people with olive branches.

"The commanders and officers were ordering us to shoot at the people and saying, 'If you do not shoot you will be killed,' and we saw snipers on the roofs shooting at people. We did not shoot. When people started running, the snipers started shooting at the army. They were not shooting at the people."

Fidou's experience appears to confirm the brutal tactics used by the regime of President Bashar al Assad in ordering the Syrian Army to shoot its own people as the regime battles weeks of protests.



He is one of a significant number of soldiers who have deserted in disgust at the government's tactics and made their way to the Turkish border.

"They could kill me if they caught me," Ismail Sher Saleh, a 25-year-old former sergeant of infantry, told The Independent newspaper.



"It could be the Mukhabarat [secret police] or even people I had served with. Some terrible things are being done: I have seen people getting shot for no reason.



"They would kill me because they would consider me a traitor and because I know what they had done."

The discontent in the army was highlighted by a gunbattle that witnesses say broke out in the northern city of Jisr al Shughur, in which defecting troops exchanged fire with loyalist soldiers, leaving up to 120 dead.



The defections pose a serious danger to Assad if he cannot hold the army together.

Thousands of people have fled into neighboring Turkey to avoid the violence, with reports that troops are burning crops and slaughtering livestock in villages near the border.

"I know this is bad, but we are alive," Siraz Abdullah, a 19-year-old student from a village near Jisr al Shughur, told The Independent.



"We have nothing left there. We had big guns used [against us] and then there were helicopters. They were flying low, so they could see they were shooting at people.



"They shot people who were not fighting but trying to get away. I saw two men getting hit as they were running away."

More than 6800 people have sought refuge in Turkey, some 40 kilometres from the town, Turkey's Anatolia news agency reported. A further 5000 have fled to Lebanon, the United Nations said.

The international political response to the continuing crisis remains fractured, with France's UN ambassador Gerard Araud saying that diplomatic wrangling at the UN Security Council over a draft resolution condemning the Syrian crackdown was costing lives.

"In that time 400 people, including women and children, have died, sometimes under torture," he said. "Thousands of refugees have fled Syria."

The United States is backing the European draft but veto-wielding Security Council permanent members Russia and China have so far blocked it, and several non-permanent members have expressed reservations.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said that Washington condemned the violence being perpetrated in Syria "in the strongest possible terms."

"President Assad needs to engage in political dialog. A transition needs to take place. If President Assad does not lead that transition then he should step aside," Mr Carney said.



Originally published as Syrian troops 'forced to shoot protesters'