Background
Kilis is a small Turkish province on the Syrian border, facing the area north of Aleppo. After the civil war began in Syria, the town became one of the main crossing points for hundreds of thousands of people. By early 2016 it hosted about 110,000 registered Syrian refugees, and its population had nearly doubled. Some areas just across the border were under the control of ISIS at the time.
This dense population put the border town under extraordinary humanitarian and security pressure. Kilis was known as a community with experience of living alongside refugees, and the 2016 attacks struck that shared space directly and deeply disrupted civilian life.
What happened
From January 2016, rockets began to be fired from ISIS-held areas in Syria at the centre of Kilis. Press reports say that after the first deadly strike on 18 January 2016, the firing continued for weeks and months. Homes, schools and mosques were hit; among the dead were children and Syrian refugees. Attacks intensified in the second half of April 2016. Reports dated 25 April 2016 said 16 or 17 people had been killed and more than 60 wounded since January. Totals for rockets fired and lives lost vary by source, and by May dozens of rockets were reported to have landed in the town.
Shelters and security measures in the town were increased. The Turkish Armed Forces responded with artillery fire on the launch positions.
According to local reports, five rockets fell on the town on 22 April 2016, killing two people and wounding six. Earlier, on 8 March 2016, eight rockets struck the town and killed two people, one of them a small child. Turkish forces are reported to have fired thousands of rounds in response between 9 January and 25 April.
Aftermath
After Turkey launched Operation Euphrates Shield on 24 August 2016, ISIS was pushed back from the border and the rocket fire on Kilis ended. The residents of Kilis had learned how fragile life in a border town can be, and for those who lost relatives the period remains a living memory. The episode is recorded as one of the longest-running and most civilian-costly security crises on Turkey's border provinces in 2016.
Because Syrian refugees were among those killed, the episode is also remembered as a shared loss for civilians on both sides of the border.