Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: A Turkish Plane is Shot Down --- What Next?

See also Bahrain Snap Analysis: When Police Attack Marchers Who Carry Flowers...
Friday's Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Nothing Certain but Death & Protests

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2135 GMT: Egypt. Supporters of Presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq and the ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces have gathered today at the Memorial of the Unknown Soldier in Nasr City, raising Egyptian flags and banners such as "Egypt Above All" while chanting "Long live Egypt," "The people and the military are one hand", and "The people want Ahmed Shafiq."

Egypt Independent reports hundreds of demonstrators but images indicate a far larger crowd.

2130 GMT: Bahrain. Women in the "Fight for Freedom" march today in A'ali:

2035 GMT: Syria. Claimed footage of the aftermath of a Free Syrian Army attack on a checkpoint in Aleppo Province:

2005 GMT: Bahrain. In Kareem Fahim's overview for The New York Times, this passage stands out:

Nabi Saleh, an island suburb of the capital, graphically illustrates their complaints. A Shiite village in the center is surrounded by seafront homes or compounds that residents say belong to government loyalists, members of the royal family or expatriates. Two slivers of beach are available for the public.

During the day, police officers sit at the entrance to town, tear-gas launchers on their laps, waiting for the inevitable nightly skirmishes with young people in the village.

A few months ago, when one of the village’s few Sunni residents put his house up for sale — fed up with the nightly smell of tear gas — his neighbors begged him to reconsider, and he did.

“This government wants us to separate,” said the man, a business owner who requested anonymity, fearing retribution by the authorities. “We can’t be one hand.” He added, speaking of the royal family, “When their chairs shake, they take action.”

Men like Ali, 22, a resident of the island, are shaking their chairs. Several months back, during an antigovernment protest, he lost an eye to a concussion grenade fired by the police. After he was fitted with a glass eye, he quickly returned to the streets. He said he had no intention of stopping now.

“Until they fall,” he said.

1925 GMT: Egypt. Jamal Elshayyal with latest news from Tahrir Square in Cairo:

1655 GMT: Bahrain. Claimed footage, in the last part of this clip, of security forces detaining a young man and slapping a woman who protests:

1645 GMT: Syria. The Local Coordination Committees of Syria claim 75 people have died today, include 22 in Deir Ez Zor Province, 18 in the Damascus suburbs, and 11 in Aleppo Province.

The LCCS asserts that 13 of those who were killed in the Damascus suburbs were "defected soldiers who were martyred in a massacre committed by the regime's forces".

1614 GMT: Syria. A funeral procession in Hama today:

1329 GMT: Bahrain. The Information Affairs Authority has issued a statement on the alleged police assault on demonstrators on Friday, injuring several protesters:

The General Director of the Northern Governorate Police announced that a group of individuals held an illegal rally called for by Al Wefaq National Islamic Society in the vicinity of Khamis on Friday evening. When the group disobeyed warnings and orders to leave the area, Police then used legal methods to disperse the crowd.

A photo of Ali Almuwali after an operation today --- he was allegedly hit in the head and seriously injured by an object fired by police, possibly a sound grenade.

1325 GMT: Egypt. The head of the election commission, Farouk Sultan, said official results from the Presidential run-off will be released Sunday afternoon.

The outcome of the contest between the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate Mohammed Morsi and Mubarak-era politician Ahmad Shafiq was supposed to be confirmed on Thursday, but the Commission said this was delayed to investigate claims from both camps of campaign irregularities.

1310 GMT: Syria. President Assad has issued a decree endorsing the new Government headed by Riyad Hijab, the former Minister of Agriculture.

1245 GMT: Syria. Activists say 28 people have been killed in Deir Ez Zor by regime shelling today.

Rastan, an insurgent-held town near Homs, after months of sustained attacks by regime forces:

1028 GMT: Israel and Palestine. Israeli air raids in Gaza early Saturday wounded at least 17 people while Palestinian groups fired 18 rockets into southern Israel, wounding one man.

The Israeli military claimed it was hitting "security targets". It said six other rockets were intercepted by a missile defence system.

1025 GMT: Syria. On Thursday, two brigadier generals and two colonels reportedly defected to the oppostion on Thursday, the same day an air force pilot flew to Jordan and requested political asylum.

Abdal Fareed Zakaria, one of the defecting colonels, tells Al Jazeera Enlgish that many more troops want to switch sides but face horrifying consequences, including attacks on their family members. He calls for a buffer zone to help the Free Syrian Army fight the regime's military.

1015 GMT: Sudan. State radio says security troops fired tear gas overnight to disperse dozens of protesters who attacked a group of policemen in the capital Khartoum.

The report asserted about 150 protesters were involved and one police vehicle was damaged.

Activists said on Friday that riot police cracked down on anti-regime protesters after prayers in several Khartoum districts, the sixth day of demonstrations fostered by a government austerity plan that slashed subsidies and doubled the price of fuel and food.

1012 GMT: Syria. Activists claim regime shelling of Al Bab in Aleppo Province today, with video showing smoke rising over the area:

1006 GMT: Syria. Turkish President Abdullah Gul has commented today about the downing of a Turkish fighter jet by Syrian forces, "It is not possible to cover over a thing like this, whatever is necessary will be done."

Gul asserted that it was routine for jets travelling at high speed to cross borders for a short distance and said an investigation into the incident would establish whether the plane was downed in Turkish airspace.

The President added that Ankara had been in telephone contact with Damascus and a search operation for the plane and missing pilots was ongoing.

0954 GMT: Bahrain. A man attends to Ali Almuwali as police look on --- Almowali reportedly suffered a serious head injury when security forces fired on demonstrators on Friday (see separate feature):

Claimed footage of police striking a man in the head, inside his car in Karranah:

0952 GMT: Syria. Rania Abouzeid of Time magazine complement this week's revelations of the foreign network, including CIA personnel, supporting arms shipments to insurgents with this profile of two distributors:

Many of the new weapons are being funneled through a Lebanese intermediary, rebel groups say. The Lebanese politician, who opposes the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and has set up an office in Istanbul, declined to be interviewed. He is the main tap, so to speak, while a handful of Syrians are the distributors. TIME tracked down a man believed to be the main distributor, a 31-year-old who says he commands some 1,500 rebels along the Syrian coast but is not part of the Free Syrian Army — the loosely organized network of military defectors and armed civilians — or any other group like the Muslim Brotherhood. He spoke on condition of complete anonymity and insisted that even his geographical area of operation be withheld from publication.

He was extremely reluctant to speak. He denied that the support was sponsored by foreign governments but admitted that “the weapons that entered recently all went through me.” He said he “distributed weapons to almost all of the provinces” but that “everything that went in was not more than 5,000 rifles, although there were a lot of bullets, 700,000 bullets.” He brushed off questions about new RPGs and denied receiving antitank missiles. “When the sun rises, everybody will see it,” he said.

TIME also found another alleged distributor, one of the four purported representatives of the rebellion in the capital, Damascus, and its outskirts. This man too said the distributors are neither FSA or Muslim Brotherhood. He did say the weapons are from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. “It’s not what you think,” he said from Istanbul, where he has recently based himself after leaving Syria. “It was just small amounts. Bullets, rifles, RPGs, and not in huge numbers. We were promised weapons that could take on a tank, but we haven’t got them yet.”

0943 GMT: Syria. Claimed footage of pro-regime "shabiha" beating people in the Mezzeh district of Damascus:

0532 GMT: Egypt. We continue to watch the development of protest, with tens of thousands gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday to challenge the ruling military's expansion of powers.

Meanwhile, there is still no sign of a result --- 48 hours after it was supposed to be delivered --- in last week's Presidential run-off.

0515 GMT: Syria. Friday's mass protests were overtaken in coverage by emerging reports that a Turkish fighter jet was shot down by Syrian forces: "Our air defences confronted a target that penetrated our air space over our territorial waters pre-afternoon on Friday and shot it down. It turned out to be a Turkish military plane."

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's office confirmed the incident: "As a result of information obtained from the evaluation of our concerned institutions and from within the joint search and rescue operations with Syria, it is understood that our plane was brought down by Syria."

However, there was a marked and significant shift in the news last night. Initially, leading Turkish newspapers had Erdogan saying that Syria had apologised for the incident. The two pilots were also reportedly safe, having been recovered in an operation involving Turkish and Syrian forces.

Later, the pilots were said to be still missing and Ankara's tone after a two-hour meeting between Erdogan, members of his cabinet and the military, was less conciliatory. A statement said Turkey would decide on its response once all the details became clear.

Meanwhile --- and far from incidentally --- 87 people died at the hands of Syrian security forces across the country, according to the Local Coordination Committees of Syria. Twenty-seven of the slain were in Deir Ez Zor Province, 17 in Aleppo Province, and 13 each in Homs Province and the Damascus suburbs.