The leader of Qatar says Arab troops should be sent to Syria to stop a deadly crackdown that has claimed the lives of thousands of people over the past 10 months.
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani's comments to CBS "60 Minutes," which will be aired today, are the first statements by an Arab leader calling for the deployment of troops inside Syria. They come amid growing claims that a team of Arab observers dispatched to the country to curb the bloodshed has failed in its mission.
Asked whether he is in favor of Arab nations intervening in Syria, Sheikh Hamad said that "for such a situation to stop the killing some troops should go to stop the killing." Excerpts of the interview were released by CBS on Saturday.
Qatar, which once had close relations with Damascus, has been a harsh critic of the 10-month crackdown by President Bashar Assad.
Arab League observers began work in Syria on Dec. 27, to verify whether the government is abiding by its agreement to end the military crackdown on dissent.
But far from bringing a halt to the violence, the mission has coincided with an apparent increase in killings. A U.N. official said Tuesday that about 400 people have been killed in the past three weeks alone, on top of an earlier estimate of more than 5,000 killed since March.
Opposition and army defectors meanwhile have increasingly been taking up arms to fight back against government forces.
On Saturday, Syria's state-run news agency SANA reported that terrorists detonated an explosive device that derailed a fuel train, setting it ablaze in the northwestern province of Idlib. SANA said three people who were in the train were wounded.
