Osman Orsal/Reuters
Syrian refugees talked with a Turkish soldier in a refugee camp in the Turkish border town of Boynuegin in Hatay province on Sunday.
Daniel Etter for The New York Times
A Syrian boy rested on suitcases in a makeshift refugee camp near the Turkish border, in Khirbit Al Jouz, Syria.
The Associated Press reported that Syrian troops had retaken control of the town after clashing with mutinous soldiers whose decision to side with armed protesters posed a potent threat to the authoritarian government.
The Local Coordinating Committees in Syria, an activist coalition with representatives in the town, said Sunday in a statement that troops entered the town from the east and the south after a heavy artillery bombardment just after 7 a.m.
“Heavy confrontations are raging between army units and members of armed organizations taking up positions in the surroundings of Jisr al-Shoughour and inside it,” Reuters reported, quoting Syrian state television.
The activist group said that tanks were among the estimated 200 vehicles that took part in the assault as helicopters armed with machine guns flew overhead.
Saeb Jamil, a resident reached by phone who spent the night in the mountains above the town, described the scene as “a real battle.” He said he saw “dozens” of tanks lined up at the entrance to town.
“We could hear the sound of heavy gunfire a few miles away from the bridge,” he said, referring to a bridge over the Orontes River on the eastern edge of town.
The A.P. reported that by midday, the streets of Jisr al-Shoughour were littered with debris but were deserted — it quoted residents who said nearly everyone had fled. Syria’s official news agency, SANA, reported that army troops entered the town after dismantling explosives planted along roads and bridges.
Reports on the number of dead or wounded varied widely among media agencies.
The attack appears to be part of a concentrated effort to suppress any further upheaval in a region with a history of resistance to the government and a combustible mix of ethnic groups, including Alawites and Sunni Arabs. The push began on Friday, when troops swept though more than a half-dozen towns on their way to Jisr al-Shoughour, terrorizing the population with arrests and attacks that residents said included firing at people in the streets and shelling some towns.
The campaign has displaced hundreds, if not thousands, of residents who fled to nearby mountains or to the border with Turkey.
Jisr al-Shoughour has been tense for days, since more than 120 members of the country’s security forces were killed, according to state television. The report blamed the deaths on “armed gangs,” but many local residents said the troops were killed by loyalist soldiers when they and a large group of other troops tried to defect.
If the residents’ claims are verified, they would reflect the first large-scale army defections and fighting among security forces. That would pose a grave challenge to the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who has relied on security forces to crush an unprecedented popular revolt against more than four decades of iron-fisted rule by his family.
But even the government’s version of events suggests that Mr. Assad’s troubles are escalating, since the protests against the government had, until then, been mostly peaceful.
It has been difficult to verify either account, and to sort fact from spin, since Syria has kept most foreign journalists out of the country.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Zambia, said Syria’s government was “engaged in horrific, revolting attacks against its own people” and found herself forced to defend the lack of forceful international action. She said regional leaders did not support the sort of intervention under way in Libya. “The region, however, is trying behind the scenes to get the government to stop,” she said in an interview with “Africa 360,” a news program.
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Residents of Jisr al-Shoughour who were reached by phone on Saturday said that the eastern part of the town was too dangerous to enter because of heavy fire from nearby military units. The northern section of the town was safer, allowing more people to flee, but residents said they had to watch out for helicopters opening fire on “anything that moves.”
On Friday, residents estimated that around 5,000 people remained in the town, out of a population of more than 50,000.
Fadi, a 27-year-old resident who gave only one name for fear of government retribution, said security forces fired on his car Friday night as he fled. But he returned Saturday morning anyway, to help ferry refugees, including the elderly, to nearby mountains.
“I saw many wounded but couldn’t help them because there are no ambulances,” he said by phone, adding that government forces had earlier attacked the vehicles. He said he also saw five dead bodies.
“The northern part is the safest, but I think it won’t be spared,” he said. “This regime is ready to go to the end.”
The men who have stayed behind to defend the town have dug trenches and built barricades out of piled stones. It was unclear if any of those who remained were defectors from the army.
Syria’s official news agency, SANA, announced that army units “arrested on Saturday two leading groups of the armed gangs” in Jisr al-Shoughour and its surrounding villages, seizing “machine guns, explosives, electric detonators and Turkish SIM cards.”
On Saturday, several hundred refugees from various towns and villages had a funeral for a victim of the violence, and seethed. Their tents provided scant protection against a vicious sun and punishing winds. There was too little water for the children and the adults were afraid to cross the border into Turkey, which is providing food, because they thought it would mark them as enemies of the state if they tried to return.
One man whose clothes were covered with mud said he had traveled with his wife and five children through the mountains to get there after a recent demonstration that ended in government violence in Latakia. An elderly woman cried as she said that a woman had just given birth in the camp.
“What is she going to do now?” she asked. “Look at how we live here.”
Despite their fears of their own government, several said they opposed any international intervention.
A 22-year-old man who gave only his first name, Mohammad, said his parents were among more than 4,000 Syrians who had crossed into Turkey since April, but he decided not to go. Kneeling, he filled his palm with dirt, to explain why. “This,” he said, “is Syria, and we are not going to leave this country alone until Assad is toppled and we get the freedoms we deserve.”
