By Khaled Oweis
AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian forces killed at least six civilians in military operations in central and northwestern regions on Wednesday, residents said, following an increase in attacks on the army by defectors sheltering in rural areas.
Neighboring Turkey, once a backer of President Bashar al-Assad, said it had suspended talks with Syria and may impose sanctions on Damascus, after failing to persuade it to stop a military crackdown on protests demanding Assad step down.
In a sign of the economic damage wreaked by the unrest, the International Monetary Fund forecast that Syria's economy will shrink this year by 2 percent -- a sharp downward revision from 3 percent growth which the fund predicted in April.
The killings occurred in Jabal al-Zawiya, rugged terrain near Turkey, where defectors have taken refuge in hideouts, and in the province of Homs, where army buses and checkpoints have been attacked more regularly, residents and activists said.
"Jabal al-Zawiya has become a hub for army defectors and we have received numerous eyewitness accounts of defectors and villagers who shelter them found killed summary execution style," said Rami Adelrahman, director of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
A farmer from the region who gave his name as Khaled said several more bodies were found shot with their arms tied behind their back since last week, when forces loyal to Assad mounted an operation in pursuit of defectors.
Residents and activists said Jabal al-Zawiya has been a route for deserters trying to flee to Turkey from the plains in the provinces of Homs and Hama to the south.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told journalists in New York that "we do not have any confidence in the current (Syrian) government" and accused Damascus of launching "dark propaganda against Turkey."
"I halted talks with the Syrian government. I did not want to come to this point. But the Syrian government forced us to make such a decision," Erdogan said after meeting U.S. President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
European Union governments, which have imposed an embargo on Syrian oil imports, banned on Wednesday European firms from making new investments in its oil industry and added several new entities and two individuals to a sanctions list.
The sanctions, which will take effect on Saturday if formally approved in writing by the 27 EU states, also include a ban on delivery of Syrian banknotes and coins produced in the European Union.
Assad, who had strengthened an alliance with Iran prior to the unrest and support for the Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah, has sent mostly core troops from his minority Alawite sect across Syria to crush the six-month uprising.
The crackdown against protests calling for political freedoms in the country that has been dominated by him and his late father for the last 41 years has led to increased defections among the rank-and-file Sunni majority in the army.
Diplomats, however, said the defectors lack outside support and have not managed to organize into a force that could pose a serious threat to Assad, with Syria's neighbors, especially Turkey, keen to avoid instability on their borders.
"Defections have not reached a level that threatens Assad, but he cannot rely on most of the army. Otherwise he would not have had to use the same loyalist core troops again and again to crush protests and move them from one city to another," a European diplomat said.
"It is clear that the security solution he has chosen is losing him support by the day from the Sunni majority."
ASSASSINATIONS OF DISSIDENTS
The United Nations says 2,700 people have been killed in the crackdown, including 100 children.
Western diplomats and human rights activists have also reported an increased number of assassinations of dissidents and protest leaders in the last several weeks, and a spike in arrests that have seen tens of thousands of people detained, focusing on professionals and academics.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Monday Syrian leaders would have to answer for crimes against humanity that he said were being committed in Syria.
But Assad has relied on Russia and China -- both with major oil concessions in Syria and with veto power on the U.N. Security Council -- to avoid a Western proposed resolution for sanctions on Syria's ruling elite.
The authorities have repeatedly denied reports of assassinations and suspected torture, saying that arrests are made according to the constitution, and that 700 soldiers and police have been killed, and the same number of "mutineers."
In the region of Houla in the countryside of the city of Homs, 165-km north of Damascus, a resident said a bus carrying troops and secret police came under attack near the village of Tel Dehab on Tuesday but there were no reports of casualties.
The area, as well as densely populated neighborhoods in Homs, has seen large protests demanding the removal of Assad in the last several weeks, drawing increased deployment of troops and gunmen loyal to Assad, residents said.
Sectarian tensions have been also rising between majority Sunni inhabitants and a large Alawite minority in the city, hometown of Assad's wife Asma. Local activists said three residents of Bab Sbaa and Bab Amro neighborhoods were killed on Wednesday, including a woman and a man shot by army snipers.
The Syrian state news agency said troops dismantled on Tuesday a bomb near Homs which had been placed under a pipeline delivering crude oil to a refinery in the city, adding that a member of the security forces was shot dead by an "armed terrorist group" in Homs.
Twenty kilometers to the north, in the town of Rastan, defecting soldiers announced the formation of a battalion called "Khaled bin al-Walid," after an Arab Muslim commander who conquered Syria.
(editing by Elizabeth Piper)