Turkey closes borders with Syria
Turkey is closing its border posts with Syria from Wednesday, Hayati Yazici, Minister of Customs and Trade of the country, said on Wednesday.
"All checkpoints along the Syrian border are closed starting today," the minister was cited by local NTV television as saying.
Syrian rebels seized control of several posts on the Syrian side of the frontier over the last week in their 16-month-old uprising against Bashar al-Assad.
The closure will halt the passage of certain vehicles between Turkey and Syria. Refugees from Syria, who have been fleeing into Turkey in their thousands to escape the conflict, cross the border through smuggling routes.
Tensions along the border were fuelled by the shooting down last month of a Turkish military reconnaissance jet, a RF-4E Phantom, by Syrian air defences.
Ankara, which previously had close ties with Damascus, subsequently increased its military presence, sending anti-aircraft missiles to the border and scrambling planes when Syrian aircraft came close to Turkish territory.
Turkey has 13 checkpoints on its 900-kilometer border with Syria.
