Istanbul: The Turkish military yesterday pounded positions of Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria after a Turkish soldier was killed by cross-border fire from jihadists, in a drastic escalation of tensions between Ankara and the extremist group.
The deadly clash was the most serious yet between the Turkish army and IS since the jihadists began to take swathes of Iraq and Syria up to the Turkish border from 2013.
The fighting erupted three days after the killing of 32 people in a suicide bombing in a Turkish town on the Syrian border, blamed on IS, sparked an upsurge in violence in Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated southeast.
Authorities have confirmed a 20-year-old Turkish man linked to IS who had been missing for six months carried out the suicide bombing. One soldier, a non-commissioned officer, was killed and two sergeants wounded by fire from five IS “terrorists” on the Syrian side of the border, the Turkish army said in a statement.
The soldier was killed in the region of Kilis. Four Turkish tanks from the fifth armoured brigade responded by opening fire on IS targets in Syria.
“Three vehicles belonging to the IS terrorists were fired on and heavily damaged,” the statement added.
It said one IS militant had also been killed and his corpse, a rocket launcher and an AK-47 used by the militants seized.
Turkey has been accused of colluding with IS extremists in the hope they might prove useful in its aim of knocking out Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. Ankara has always denied the claims. AFP
