ANKARA: A convoy of about 30 military vehicles, including trucks loaded with missile batteries, set off from Turkey’s coastal town of Iskenderun in Hatay province, headed for the Syrian border 50 km away, Turkish media reported on Thursday.

State-run Anatolia news agency said armoured military vehicles were also being transported to military installations in Sanliurfa, in the middle of Turkey's border with Syria and Hatay, a panhandle province that juts down into Syria.

Anatolia said there were reports the vehicles were to be deployed along the border. It said several military vehicles had travelled separately to a military garrison in the border town of Reyhanli in Hatay.

The reports come less than a week after Syria shot down a Turkish reconnaissance jet over the Mediterranean prompting a sharp rebuke from Ankara which said the act would not go unpunished.