The clang of unseen assault rifles being cocked carries across the United Nations-controlled buffer zone in ethnically cleaved Cyprus, ratcheting up concerns that the embers of the island's stagnant conflict could again be rekindled. The rifles are just the tip of a string of recent escalations by Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots, rivals separated along the 180-kilometer (120-mile) buffer zone that snakes through the capital’s medieval center. The United Nations peacekeeping force in Cyprus, known as UNFICYP, has seen the deployment of large-caliber weapons at guard posts, such as machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, construction of hundreds of new fighting positions as well as the installation of dozens of high-tech cameras with infrared capability that could potentially assist with artillery and missile targeting systems, the force’s outgoing Military Chief of Staff Col. Ben Ramsay said.