'Fear and Panic': Turkish Border Town Grinds to a Halt Under Daesh Fire

“We have very serious security problems in Kilis where children stay out of schools and people prefer to stay indoors. Storeowners are worried about this regular shelling and many companies have rolled back their investment activity there,” Murat Sakar said.

“Local tour operators have all gone bankrupt as people have stopped coming in and local administration officials are looking for ways to move out,” he added.

Muzaffer Baca, deputy head of the Blue Crescent international charity foundation, said that 49 artillery shells had landed in the town since January.

“This is by no means a coincidence because Kilis is a strategic town hosting an estimated 90,000 Syrian refugees – more than in any other place in Turkey.

“Many of these people are construction workers and some have started their own business. By regularly shelling the town Daesh hopes to destabilize the situation and instill fear and panic in the hearts of its residents. I’m worried by the Turkish authorities’ failure to do something about it. We have seen no official statements to this effect, except routine condemnations of Daesh. I wonder why, with all the drones our military has, it is unable to track all those missile launchers firing at us,” Muzaffer Baca said.

Since January, Kilis, whose population has swollen to 200,000 with the arrival of 130,000 refugees from neighboring Syria, has come come under 57 rocket attacks by Daesh terrorists, which left 17 people dead and 45 injured, many of them Syrian refugees.