Turkey shells IS targets in Syria

There were no casualties in Kilis after multiple rockets landed in an empty field, Mayor Hasan Kara said. The security sources said the Turkish military fired howitzers into Syria in response. “We go to sleep to the sounds of rockets and we wake up to the sound of rockets,” Kara told Reuters over telephone. 

Kilis is home to an estimated 110,000 Syrian refugees and is frequently targeted by artillery from across the border, a region controlled by Islamic State militants. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Tuesday that 21 people had been wounded so far this week in shelling. Hospital sources later said that one of the wounded had died. In March, two people, including a young child, were killed by rocket fire into the city. 

The Turkish armed forces often respond to such attacks by firing at targets in Syria. Turkey is facing multiple security threats. As part of a US-led coalition, it is fighting Islamic State in neighbouring Syria and Iraq. It is also battling Kurdish militants in its southeast, where a 2-1/2 year ceasefire collapsed last July, triggering the worst violence since the 1990's.

NATO member Turkey has increasingly become a target for Islamic State which is blamed to have carried out two of the four suicide bombings this year, targeting capital Ankara and biggest Turkish city Istanbul. A member of the US-led coalition against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, Turkey has been accused by its Western partners of lax border controls that have let foreign fighters cross into Syria to join the Sunni hardline group. Ankara denies any negligence.