Turkish defense chief denies reports of troops entering Syria

Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz has refuted Syrian government claim that about 100 Turkish troops had entered Syria, state-run Anatolia news agency reported on Monday.

"It is not true," Yilmaz told lawmakers in the Turkish capital Ankara during a parliamentary budget meeting Sunday night shortly after the Syrian government made the claim.

According to media reports, the Syrian Foreign Ministry has sent a letter of protest to the United Nations Security Council over the alleged move.

In a related development, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke Sunday about the situation in Syria, the prime minister's office said.

The phone conversation came in the wake of Turkish shelling positions Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in northern Syria. The Turkish artillery continued to shell Kurdish areas in northern Syria for the second straight day on Sunday, killing and wounding nine fighters of a Kurdish group, a monitor group reported.

Two fighters with the Kurdish-backed Syrian Democratic Force, a new rebel alliance constituting of Syrian Arab and Kurdish fighters and supported by the West, were killed and seven others wounded by the Turkish shelling that targeted YPG positions in Syria's northern province of Aleppo, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Turkish officials have repeatedly said that they will not allow the Kurds in Syria to expand more near the Turkish border.

The latest escalation also came as talk about a ground intervention by Saudi and Turkey troops in Syria have made headlines in recent days.

Observers say such an intervention will spark even more chaos in the war-torn country.

Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said any foreign troops entering Syria without the consent of the government "will be sent home in wooden coffins." Endit