Turkey sends military reinforcements to Syrian border / Russian Navy to Augment Mediterranean Task Group near Syria with Intel Ship and two Combatants

The Turkish military dispatched additional troops and weapons to the Syrian border on Wednesday as international powers are set to gather at the G-20 summit over the weekend to discuss a possible Syria intervention.

Reinforcement units were sent from a military command in the southern province of Gaziantep to Kilis province, bordering Syria. The military convoy, which was escorted by the police, arrived in Kilis on Wednesday afternoon.

The decision to send additional troops to the border is believed to be related to a consignment of live ammunition that exploded as it was being smuggled into Turkey on Tuesday, killing six people along the border with Syria.

The Prime Ministry's Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate (AFAD) has built a field hospital and decontamination unit near the Öncüpınar border gate on Syrian border in the southern province of Kilis to handle with possible chemical threats from Syria, which is known to have a large arsenal of chemical weapons.

A group of Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) specialists, who work within AFAD, have been deployed in the region with necessary technical equipment.

Experts and doctors will deal with Syrians in case of a chemical attack inside Syria in the field hospital that was set up on the Syrian border, Dr. Serdar Sarıfakı from the AFAD and who is in charge of the CBRN team in Kilis said.

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The leadership of the Ministry of Defense of Russia has decided to increase the numbers of intelligence collection ships in the Mediterranean Sea in order to gain better coverage of the situation near the shores of Syria, reported a source in the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia.

“Augmenting operations to understand and shed light on the situation in the maritime regions adjacent to the Syrian coast will be effected by a certain increase in the numbers of Russian intelligence collection ships in the Mediterranean Sea,” said the source, as reported by ITAR-TASS.

“Specifically, on Sunday the Black Sea Fleet intelligence collection ship Priazovye was dispatched to the Syrian coast,” he specified.

Last week a source in the Russian General Staff reported that in connection with the situation surrounding Syria, the high command of the Russian Navy had decided to replenish the ship complement of the permanent operational formation in the Mediterranean Sea. During the coming days the Navy force will be augmented by a Northern Fleet Large Antisubmarine Warfare Ship. And later “it will be joined by the Northern Fleet Missile Cruiser Moskva, which is now completing the fulfillment of tasks in the North Atlantic and will soon begin an Atlantic transit toward the Strait of Gibraltar.”