Three Turkish soldiers were killed in northern Syria in what the Turkish military said was a pre-dawn Syrian airstrike, an account disputed by Syrian activists, who said the soldiers were killed by an Islamic State suicide attack the day before.
The Turkish military said on Thursday in a statement on its website that the attack took place at 3:30 am, but did not provide an exact location. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said the airstrike took place near the town of al-Bab, which Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces are trying to take back from the Islamic State group.
However, a Syrian monitoring group that tracks the conflict through a network of activists on the ground said the Turkish soldiers were killed by an IS suicide attack on Wednesday.