(ANSAmed) - ANKARA, SEPTEMBER 22 - Turkish Interior Minister
Efkan Ala, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus and Food,
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Minister Mehdi Eker were
attacked with stones on Saturday by a group of outraged people
in Turkey's Sanliurfa province due to a new wave of refugees
from the Syrian district of Kobani, recently captured by the
terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). As Isil
militants backed by tanks captured 16 Kurdish villages within 44
hours in Syria's northern Kobani district, near the Turkish
border, prompting civilians to flee their homes amid fears of
retribution by the extremists sweeping across the area, the
three ministers paid a visit to Sanliurfa's Suruc district,
where tens of thousands of refugees have taken shelter along the
border. Angered by the government's policies on Isil and
refugees, an angry crowd of people threw stones at the three
ministers and their entourage. Coming to observe the conditions
in Suruc, the three ministers were booed and showered with
stones by the angry crowd, which chanted slogans against the
government's Isil and refugee policies. The ministers'
bodyguards attempted to prevent the stones from hitting the
ministers and their delegation. For over a year, Isil and
Kurdish militia fighters have been locked in a fierce battle in
several pockets of northern Syria that are largely inhabited by
Kurds. These clashes are only one front in Syria's broader civil
war - a multilayered conflict that the UN says has killed more
than 190,000. (ANSAmed).
