Turkey deploys troops at border

Regional tensions swirling around the 16-month-old Syrian crisis ticked higher on Thursday as Turkey said it was stationing antiaircraft batteries on the common border following the downing of one of its warplanes.

Word of the border fortification coincided with further suggestions within Syria that insurgents seeking to oust President Bashar al-Assad were operating with increasing audacity in an and around the capital, Damascus. The state news agency, SANA, said an explosion rocked the parking lot of the Palace of Justice, a government court building, on Thursday, sending a plume of black smoke into the sky and injuring three people, just a day after a disputed attack on a pro-government satellite television station 14 miles south of the city.

Earlier, Turkey's TRT state broadcaster showed convoys of military trucks carrying antiaircraft guns, a rocket launcher and troops toward several border areas near the southern province of Hatay, where thousands of Syrians have taken refuge from the increasingly bloody insurrection against President Assad's government.

The deployment came two days after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Assad that "every military element that approaches the Turkish border from Syria in a manner that constitutes a risk would be considered as a threat and would be treated as a target."

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