Two Turkish soldiers killed in attack near Syria border: Ministry

Turkey’s defense ministry says two Turkish soldiers have been killed in a mortar attack near a military base on the Syrian border.

The ministry said in a statement on Thursday that the Turkish forces had a day earlier been targeted in the country’s border town of Akcakale in the southeastern province of Sanliurfa.

Turkish artillery units returned fire immediately after the attack and operations in the region continued, according to the statement.

The ministry provided no further details on the incident.

The targeted military base is across from the Syrian town of Tel Abyad, which Turkey’s forces and their allied militants recently seized from the so-called People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Kurdish militant group.

Turkish army forces on October 9 launched a cross-border offensive into northeastern Syria in a declared attempt to clear YPG militants from a 32-kilometer “safe zone” in border areas.

Ankara regards the US-backed YPG as a terrorist organization tied to the homegrown Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group, which has been seeking an autonomous Kurdish region in the Anatolian country since 1984.

SS