Mortar crashes into school in Turkey

Several people were wounded and at least one feared killed after a mortar shell which appeared to have been fired from Syria struck a school in Turkey’s southeastern border province of Kilis, security sources and local media reports said.

Footage broadcast on the website of the Hurriyet newspaper showed what appeared to be a body lying by the door of the school in Kilis town, the provincial capital, as shocked women and children were escorted from the building.

Security sources said as many as two people may have been killed, while local media reports said four people including pupils were wounded, one of them seriously. A government official told Reuters the authorities were investigating the number of casualties and the cause of the blast.

Kilis is on the edge of a roughly 100-km strip of Syrian border territory controlled by Daesh. Turkish towns in the region have frequently seen artillery fire spill over during Syria’s civil war, about to enter its sixth year.

Stepped-up attacks

Turkey’s armed forces have responded in kind. But Nato member Turkey, part of the US-led coalition, has in turn become a target for Daesh. A suicide bombing last week in Istanbul, blamed on the group, killed 10 German tourists, while bombings in Ankara and the border town of Suruc last year killed more than 135 people.

Turkish tanks and artillery bombarded Daesh positions in Syria and Iraq in the days after last Tuesday’s bombing in Istanbul, killing almost 200 of its fighters, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has said.

Kilis mayor Hasan Kara told Turkey’s NTV that at least two mortar shells were thought to have been fired from Syria, one hitting the school and the other landing in an empty field.