Filed by KOSU News in World News.
February 11, 2013

An explosion Monday rocked a border crossing between Turkey and Syria. NPR’s Deborah Amos reports she was at the scene with many other people, when a car blew up.

It was “a huge explosion,” she tells our Newscast desk. “People panicked. You can see from where I am … billowing clouds of smoke over the Turkish border point. It was inside Turkey. We’d already come out of Syria and we were in Turkey when the explosion went off.” It all happened near the Turkish town of Reyhanli.

Reuters says more than 30 people were wounded and that there may have been at least seven deaths.

We’ll watch for more on this news. It happens, of course, at a tense border. As the nearly two-year-old battle inside Syria between forces loyal to President Bashar Assad and those who oppose him has continued, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have fled to safety in Turkey. [Copyright 2013 NPR]