Turkey's military struck targets inside Syria on Wednesday in response to a mortar bomb fired from Syrian territory which killed five Turkish civilians, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's office said in a statement.Our armed forces in the border region responded immediately to this abominable attack in line with their rules of engagement; targets were struck through artillery fire against places in Syria identified by radar, the statement said.
"Turkey will never leave unanswered such kinds of provocation by the Syrian regime against our national security," it added.
Davutoğlu had also agreed with NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on the need for an emergency meeting of NATO members, the statement said.
A mortar bomb fired from Syria landed in a residential district of the southeastern Turkish town of Akçakale on Wednesday, killing a woman and four children from the same family and wounding at least 13 other people.
A cloud of dust and smoke rose up over low-rise buildings as residents ran to help the wounded. Others, infuriated by the increasing spillover of violence from Syria's civil war, took to the streets shouting protests against the local authorities.
Davutoğlu phoned UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to brief him about the incident and also spoke with senior military officials and Syria crisis mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, his ministry said in a statement.
Davutoğlu signaled over the weekend that Turkey would take action if there was a repeat of a mortar strike which damaged homes and workplaces in Akçakale last Friday.
"It (latest mortar round) hit right in the middle of the neighbourhood. The wife and four children from the same family died," Ahmet Emin Meşhurgül, local head of the Turkish Red Crescent, told Reuters, adding he knew the victims personally.
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