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Media says Turkish airstrike kills three Syrian soldiers
Turkish airstrikes killed three Syrian soldiers in the countryside near Aleppo on Tuesday (August 16), SANA news network reported.
Syrian forces responded by striking Turkish military sites, causing an unknown number of casualties, the outlet said, according to the RT.
Three soldiers were killed in the strikes and six others wounded, SANA reported, citing military sources. According to these sources, Syria’s armed forces "responded to the aggression, targeting the occupation sites and destroying them, causing human and material losses.”
The report continued, several sites belonging to Turkish-backed anti-government militants were also hit in retaliation.
The military source stated: "With the intensification of the provocations practiced by the Turkish regime and the repeated attacks on different areas of Syrian territory, we affirm that any attack on any military point of our armed forces will be met by a direct and immediate response on all fronts.”
Ankara-sponsored militant groups occupy large swathes of territory in northern Syria, and Turkey regularly conducts offensives against Kurdish forces in this region.
Turkey’s allies, the Syrian National Army, and its primary enemies, the Kurdish YPG, both oppose the government of Bashar Assad.
Russia, Turkey and Iran to continue cooperation to ‘eliminate terrorists’ in Syria
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly promised to establish a 30-kilometer “safe zone” on the far side of its border with Syria.
Earlier this month, he said that Turkish forces would soon launch an operation to “clear the last areas where the terrorist organization is nesting in Syria,” referring to land on the Syrian side of the border still held by the YPG.
Erdogan Meets Putin in Sochi to Push Syria Operation
Earlier on Tuesday (August 16), Turkey’s Defense Ministry said that it had "neutralized 13 terrorists" near the border in retaliation for a mortar attack on a border outpost, and that “operations continue in the region.”
In a separate announcement on Twitter, the ministry said that its mechanized forces had killed five Kurdish fighters.
Source: rt
