Turkey: Turkey deploys armored vehicles, including tanks, to Syria border
Turkey deployed 35 armored vehicles, including at least a dozen tanks, to the border with Syria on Monday as Islamist extremists closed in on the Syrian Kurdish border town of Kobane, raining shells from two directions.
At least two mortar rounds landed on the Turkish side of the border, but it was unclear whether Turkey would intervene to prevent the capture of the city, which was under heavy bombardment Monday night. At least 160,000 Syrian refugees, with more waiting to cross, have entered Turkey in the past week as the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, pushed toward the city.
“Maybe we can survive for a few days,” Idriss Nassan, the deputy foreign minister of the Kobane canton, told McClatchy, predicting “great resistance” by the city’s defender, a Kurdish militia called the People’s Protection Units. “But ISIS will reach the city of Kobane.”