The world must urgently “hear screams” from Syria and do something to stop the bloodshed, Turkey's prime minister said Thursday. Recep Tayyip Erdogan said measures must be taken for the safety of energy supplies as well as global peace. Erdogan, speaking at an international energy conference in Istanbul, did not specify any possible actions. His comments came as rebel troops hit youth offices of Syria's ruling Baath party Thursday, a day after a spectacular raid on a military intelligence base outside Damascus, a human rights group said. There was no immediate word on any casualties from the attack in Idlib province in northwest Syria, close to the Turkish border. “A group of dissident troops attacked regime youth offices, where security agents were meeting, with rocket-propelled grenades and clashes broke out,” the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The attack came hot on the heels of a raid on an air force intelligence base in Harasta, outside the capital, on Wednesday by fighters of the Free Syrian Army, a rebel group formed by army deserters that has inflicted mounting losses on the regular army in recent months. Erdogan called on the international community to be sensitive to the plight of the Syrian people as much as they were to the uprising in oil-rich Libya, saying “the lack of reaction to massacres in Syria was causing irreparable wounds in the conscience of humanity.” “No doubt, the problems both in Syria and in the Middle East in general are global problems,” Erdogan said. “Therefore, we have to see the tragedy in the area, hear the screams and urgently take measures to stop the bloodshed for the safety of energy supplies as much as global peace and calm.” Erdogan said: “Syria may not be attracting attention as much as Libya because it has not enough oil.” “But I want to stress that those killed in Syria are as human as those killed in Libya,” Erdogan said. Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's brutal repression of the eight-month-old Syrian uprising has left an estimated 3,500 dead and crippled the country's exports of heavy crude oil after the European Union banned oil imports from Syria.
