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Turkey has responded to the downing of its warplane by deploying anti-aircraft missiles on the Syrian border. It also scrambled jets Tuesday for the third consecutive day after it said Syrian helicopters approached its border. A search for the wreckage of the plane and its two missing pilots is still under way in Syrian waters. Assad said Syria had no intention of fueling tensions along its border with NATO-member Turkey. "We will not allow it to turn into an armed conflict that would harm both countries," he said. "We did not build up our forces on the Turkish border and we will not." He said Syria "would have apologized" for the shooting if the plane had not been shot down in Syrian airspace. He said the rise of tensions could have been prevented if channels of communication between the two militaries remained open. "We are in a state of war, so every unidentified plane is an enemy plane," the paper quoted Assad as saying. "Let me state it again: We did not have the slightest idea about its identity when we shot it down." Turkey, however, has insisted that the plane's electronic signals, which indicate if an aircraft is friend or foe, were activated during the entire flight and that Turkey even intercepted radio conversations in which Syrian forces referred to the plane. Turkey's Hurriyet newspaper, citing intelligence sources, reported early last week that Syrian forces referred to the plane using the word for "neighbor" in an intercepted radio conversation. Turkey also insisted that the plane was not spying on Syria but just testing Turkey's radar capabilities. An international human rights watchdog, meanwhile, says it has identified the location of 27 torture centers run by Syrian intelligence agencies based on testimony from former detainees and defectors. Human Rights Watch said the systematic patterns of torture documented points to a state policy of torture and constitute a crime against humanity. It said it has documented more than 20 distinct torture methods used by the regime. "The intelligence agencies are running an archipelago of torture centers scattered across the country," said Ole Solvang, emergencies researcher at HRW.
[Associated
Press;
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