UPI, Akcakale, Turkey, 8 Oct 2012 – Turkish residents near Syria were evacuated Monday and Prime Minister RecepTayyip Erdogan said his country must be prepared as if it will fight a war.
Police ordered residents near the Turkish-Syrian border fence to move out after Syrian mortar fire landing on Turkish territory for a fifth straight day — the most recent shelling damaging a Turkish Grain Board grain elevator in the border-checkpoint town of Akcakale, officials said.
The town’s mayor reported no deaths or injuries.
Akcakale is where Syrian artillery killed five Turkish citizens Wednesday, escalating tensions between the two former allies.
Turkish troops immediately retaliated Sunday, hitting an ammunition depot belonging to the Syrian army, the Hurriyet Daily News reported.
Witnesses said they saw a fire break out.
‘You have to be prepared as if you are about to be in a war at any time,’ Erdogan said in Istanbul Sunday in response to opposition criticism to his military response to Syria.
‘If you cannot be prepared, you cannot call yourself a powerful country and powerful nation,’ he said.
Turkey has fired artillery shells across the border every day since Wednesday in response to Syrian artillery hitting towns along its border.
The regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has refused to apologize for Wednesday’s deadly shelling that prompted the cross-border artillery exchanges. It says it first wants to investigate the source of the fire, which it said could be from rebel fighters.
In Syria’s al-Raqqa province, across from Akcakale, rebel fighters said Sunday’s shelling on Turkey came from regime tanks in the village of AinArous, about 7 miles from the border.
The Daily News said Tel Abyad, a Syrian town about 9 miles from Turkey’s border that was the focus of intense retaliatory shelling from Turkey, was recently seized by Syrian rebels. The Wall Street Journal said Tel Abyad was being shelled by Syrian army positions seeking to recapture it.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in Peru Saturday the continued cross-border hostilities raised concerns the conflict could spread to neighboring countries.
He said Washington was communicating its concerns through diplomatic channels.