ANKARA, March 13 (Reuters) – NATO air defences in the eastern Mediterranean have shot down a third ballistic missile that \u200cwas fired from Iran towards Turkey, the Turkish Defence \u200cMinistry said on Friday, adding that it was asking Tehran for clarification.<\/p>\n
NATO air \u200bdefences shot down the first Iranian ballistic missile fired at Turkey on March 4, followed by the shooting down of a second Iranian missile on March 9. The ministry has said the first \u200cincoming missile was downed \u2060en route to Turkish airspace, while the second entered it.<\/p>\n
The missiles increasingly pose a test for NATO \u2060member Ankara and the alliance. Turkey, NATO’s second-largest army and Iran’s neighbour, has warned Tehran against any more attacks. It also protested to \u200bTehran \u200bafter every incident, but has not \u200bsuggested it wants to \u200cformally call on alliance members for protection.<\/p>\n
“All necessary measures are being taken decisively and without hesitation against any threat directed at our country’s territory and airspace. Consultations are being conducted with the relevant country to clarify all aspects of the incident,” the ministry \u200csaid in a statement.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate \u200bcomment from Iran, but it has \u200bso far repeatedly rejected \u200bdeliberately targeting Turkey amid its war with the \u200cUnited States and Israel.<\/p>\n
Following the incidents, \u200bNATO has beefed \u200bup its ballistic missile defences in the region and deployed a U.S. Patriot air defence system to the southeastern Turkish \u200bprovince of Malatya \u200cto increase defence at the Kurecik radar base there \u200bused by the alliance.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Daren \u200bButler, Editing by William Maclean)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANKARA, March 13 (Reuters) – NATO air defences in the eastern Mediterranean have shot down a third ballistic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2551,9036,9035,34,1486,69,1176,9034],"class_list":{"0":"post-17460","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tehran","8":"tag-ballistic-missile","9":"tag-eastern-mediterranean","10":"tag-incoming-missile","11":"tag-iran","12":"tag-nato","13":"tag-tehran","14":"tag-turkey","15":"tag-turkish-defence-ministry"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116221473231450680","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}