Turkey to intensify response to DAESH attacks

Turkey will keep responding to rocket fire from Syria which hits the southern border town of Kilis, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday, warning DAESH would suffer greater losses if it keeps targeting the town.

Kilis, just across the border from a region of northern Syria controlled by the DAESH terrorist group, has been hit frequently by rocket fire in recent weeks.

Turkey has taken additional military measures after suffering more than 50 artillery attacks from DAESH-controlled territory in Syria since January, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said last week during a meeting of the governing Justice and Development Party (AK Party) in the Parliament.

Turkish media reports said that at least 20 people have been killed and scores of others wounded in Kilis since the beginning of the year from repeated rocket attacks.

A car bomb explosion has killed two police officers and injured 22 others, including four civilians in front of a police headquarter in Turkey's southeastern province of Gaziantep on Sunday.

The United States will also deploy a rocket launcher system in Turkey along its Syrian border across which DAESH-held areas have been laying as part of a strategy to seal off an area around the Syrian town of Manbij, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was quoted as saying on April 26.

Turkish security forces have conducted critical operations last month against the DAESH terrorist organisation in the attacked province, detaining four suspects who were allegedly involved in the recent terror attack in Istanbul's Beyoglu District on March 19.

Gaziantep police department has launched an extensive investigation against the group's network in the province, which has a large Syrian refugee population, after a DAESH suicide attack in Istanbul killed five people including the attacker.

DAESH representatives in Syria have recently called for further attacks against Turkish targets in the country's provinces Gaziantep and Kilis, which border Syria, and their particular districts Nizip and Karkamis after Turkey increased pressure on the group, detaining and arresting many suspects of the terrorist organisation.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu also signalled on Tuesday that Turkish military units "could be sent in northern Syria if necessary," during an interview with Al Jazeera.

"Land forces could be deployed [in Syria] if things make it necessary. We are ready to take all kinds of measures in or out of Turkey in order to defend ourselves," Davutoglu pointed out.