Three Turkish soldiers were killed in an airstrike in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday, February 27, The Defense Post reports.
Turkey, which supports several Syrian rebel groups in the area, immediately responded to the attack by hitting Syrian “regime targets,” Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on Twitter.
“We have three martyrs in Idlib, but the regime’s losses are very high,” Erdogan said during a speech in Ankara, without giving details.
Russia and the Syrian government consider rebels fighting Assad’s forces to be terrorists. Idlib, the last rebel pocket in the country following nine years of civil war, is largely controlled by the al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, but is home to millions of people displaced from other area of the country.
The Turkish death toll rose after the defense ministry earlier on Thursday said two soldiers had been killed and two had been injured in the northwest province.
The latest casualties bring the number of Turkish security personnel killed in regime fire in Idlib this month to 20.
Despite the losses, Erdogan said developments in Idlib had taken a “
