ANKARA (AFP) - Turkey's prime minister vowed on Tuesday to retaliate against Syria for its 'heinous' downing of one of its warplanes, as the head of Nato said such an attack on one of its members was unacceptable.
Amid reports of clashes around elite Republican Guard posts in Damascus, Ankara raised the heat on the Assad regime by accusing it of shooting down the jet last Friday while it was in international airspace, and without warning.
The United States, meanwhile, denounced the United Nations' 'colossal failure' to protect civilians inside Syria during a 15-month conflict which activists say has cost more than 15,000 lives.
Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, once a close ally of President Bashar al-Assad, has become one of the Syrian leader's biggest critics and his reaction to the downing of the jet represented his fiercest outburst to date
