With the deployment of six NATO Patriot anti-missile units to Turkey underway, a giant U.S. military cargo plane landed at Incirlik Air Base on Tuesday (January 8) carrying missile equipment.
The U.S. is providing two of six Patriot batteries, which are designed to intercept incoming missiles; the Netherlands and Germany are each providing a further two.
U.S. soldiers who will man the batteries began arriving in the country on Friday (January 4), the U.S. military said.
Turkey formally asked NATO for the missiles in November to bolster security along its 900-km (560-mile) border with Syria, which has been torn by a 21-month insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad. Turkey repeatedly has scrambled fighter jets along the frontier and responded in kind when Syrian shells came down inside its borders.
Meanwhile, violence continues in Syria whereby regime forces repelled an attack against the town of al-Mastouma, North West Syria as several tanks gathered days following the infiltration of rebel militants, the Syiran Observatory for Human Rights reported.
The Mastouma military camp had been used as a scout base during summer, but in the wake of the battle of Shughur Bridge in June 2011 where dozens of Syrian army officers were killed, the regime reordered the camp, supporting it with tanks and troops.
On another front, a spokesman for a Jordanian charity said a riot broke out in a Syrian refugee camp over harsh winter conditions and seven aid workers were injured.
Ghazi Sarhan said dozens of refugees, frustrated that their tents fell or were swept away in howling winds overnight, beat Jordanian aid workers with sticks and pelted them with stones as they distributed bread on Tuesday.
Calls from loudspeakers echoed across the camp in Jordan's northern desert, calling on protesters to evacuate muddy streets with large puddles caused by torrential rain in the region's first major winter storm this year.
Rain was intermittent and the wind had subsided by Tuesday. But there were warning of a major blizzard threatening Turkey and Jordan the two countries with the largest Syrian refugee populations.
This as the U.N. food agency said it is unable to help 1 million Syrians who are going hungry.
The World Food Program said Tuesday it is already helping 1.5 million of the 2.5 million Syrians that the Syrian Arab Red Crescent says are in need of it.
WFP spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs says the lack of security and its inability to use the Syrian port of Tartous for its shipment means that a large number of people will not get their aid.
Byrs also said that the agency has temporarily pulled its staff out of its offices in the Syrian cities of Homs, Aleppo, Tartous and Qamisly due to the rising dangers in those areas.
AP/REUTERS/LBCI