'US training Syrian rebels in Turkey'
A former employee with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has said that American and NATO forces are training Syrian rebels in southeastern Turkish city of Hakkari near the border with Syria.Sibel Edmonds also said that she had received information from Turkish and US sources indicating that training Syrian opposition forces, led by defected Syrian colonel Riad al-Assad, had started in May, the Turkish daily Milliyet reported. Edmonds further added that the US is involved in smuggling arms into Syria from Incirlik military base in Turkey in addition to providing financial support for Syrian rebels. Syria has been experiencing a deadly unrest ever since mid-March, with demonstrations being held both against and in support of President Bashar al-Assad's government. Confessions by a number of Syrian rebels about foreign-sponsored plans to carry out armed operations and killing ordinary people as well as security forces prove that recent developments in the country are part of an attempt to incite a revolt in the strategic country neighboring the Israeli regime, aiming to overthrow the current government and replace it with a US-backed regime. The Western-backed opposition in Syria accuses security forces of a bloody crackdown on protests. But Damascus has dismissed the accusation, arguing that the security forces have been given clear instructions not to harm civilians. Damascus blames the violence on foreign-sponsored terrorist groups, with the Syrian state TV broadcasting reports showing seized weapons caches and confessions by terrorists describing how they obtained arms from foreign sources.