THERE are no sirens or warnings of any kind. In Kilis, a border town of about 200,000 in Turkey’s south, rockets fired by Islamic State (IS) terrorists from nearby Syria fall from the sky, tearing through buildings and cars. “You have a few seconds to take cover and then, boom,” says Mustafa Cerrah, an estate agent, standing near the site of a blast that killed four Syrian refugee children. Since the start of the year, the rockets have left 21 locals dead.

Turkey has responded by pounding IS positions with artillery. “Turkey has done as much as it can, but it is still not enough,” says the town’s mayor, Hasan Kara. The only way to prevent attacks, he says, echoing the national government’s position since the start of the bloodshed, is to establish a safe zone in northern Syria. Western states are lukewarm about the idea. “Our security is not a priority for many of our allies,” complains a Turkish official.

IS has been doing more than firing rockets. Since last year, suicide-bombers linked to the group have killed more than 150 people across Turkey. On May 1st a homegrown jihadist detonated a car bomb in front of a police headquarters in Gaziantep, a southern Turkish city, killing two officials. Weeks earlier, IS shelled a border post about 80km east of Kilis and a Turkish training base in northern Iraq. Its propaganda increasingly calls for attacks on Turkish forces. A recent edition of an IS magazine featured a photograph of a captured Turkish soldier believed to be held in the group’s Syrian stronghold, Raqqa.