•Rocket trails
Turkey’s defence ministry today said a ballistic missile from Iran had been shot down in Turkish airspace by NATO forces in the third such incident of the Middle East war.
“A ballistic munition launched from Iran and entering Turkish airspace was neutralised by NATO air and missile defence assets deployed in the eastern Mediterranean,” a ministry statement said.
Hours earlier, sirens wailed at Turkey’s southern Incirlik airbase, a key NATO facility where US troops are stationed, state news agency Anadolu reported.
Local media also reported sirens in Batman, 600 kilometres (370 miles) further east.
NATO air defences shot down a first ballistic missile fired from Iran on March 4, with a second intercepted on Monday.
Residents of the southern city of Adana, next to Incirlik, were woken by sirens at 3:25 am (0025 GMT) and several posted footage of a fast-moving object that appeared to be on fire, the Ekonomim business news website reported.
According to defence news site SavunmaSanayiST, these objects could be “fragments of a third ballistic missile” or of the interceptor, which would have burned up upon entering the atmosphere before falling back to the ground.
Separately, sirens sounded in Batman around 4:00 am, with reporters saying the alarm appeared to be coming from a military drone base next to the city’s airport.
Patience not ‘limitless’
Turkish security sources told local media that Ankara was not party to the war and was acting with caution to avoid being drawn into the conflict.
But they said this should not be interpreted or limitless tolerance, adding that the country had the necessary force to guarantee national security or undertake “punitive” measures.
Turkey announced on Tuesday that a Patriot air-defence system had been deployed in the centre of the country, a day after NATO intercepted a second missile fired from Iran.
Monday’s incident prompted Washington to close its consulate in Adana and urge all US citizens to leave southeastern Turkey.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian denied the missile had been fired from Iran in a phone call to Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Since the US-Israeli war on Iran started on February 28, Tehran has retaliated with strikes across the Middle East.
Incirlik is an important NATO facility used by US troops for decades, but which also hosts military personnel from Spain and Poland, its website says.
US troops are also stationed at Kurecik, a base in the central Malatya province, where they man an early-warning radar system NATO describes as a “key element” of its missile shield that can detect Iranian missile launches.
Although Ankara has categorically denied radar data has ever been used to help Israel, its presence has rattled Tehran.
On Tuesday, Turkey said a Patriot missile defence system was being deployed in Malatya just days after NATO moved to strengthen its “alliance-wide ballistic missile defence posture”.
