ISTANBUL // Three Turkish soldiers were accidentally killed and 11 wounded in the Syrian town of Al Bab on Thursday when a Russian air strike targeting hit a building where the troops were deployed, Turkey’s army said.
With Moscow and Ankara co-operating ever more closely on Syria, president Vladimir Putin quickly reached out to his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to express his condolences and promise better future coordination.
The Russian plane had been seeking to hit ISIL targets but “by accident three of our heroic soldiers were martyred when a building was bombed where our units were”, the Turkish army said, adding that one of the 11 injured was wounded badly.
An investigation was being carried out by both sides, it said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian strike took place on Thursday morning due to a “lack of agreement of co-ordinates during strikes by the Russian air force”. Both countries have been conducting air strikes in the ISIL-held town.
Both sides appeared keen to move on from the incident, as was the case when an off-duty Turkish policeman shot dead Russia’s ambassador to Ankara Andrei Karlov on December 19 in a crime that shocked both countries.
Then, Ankara allowed Russian investigators to work in Turkey and also gave the killed ambassador the honour of a ceremony on the tarmac of Ankara airport before his corpse was airlifted back to Russia.
Following Thursday’s incident, the Russian defence ministry said chief of the general staff Valery Gerasimov and his Turkish counterpart, Hulusi Akar, had spoken on the phone and “agreed on closer coordination of joint actions”.
It came as the new CIA chief, Mike Pompeo, was in Ankara for talks with Turkish officials on issues including Syria, on his first foreign visit since the inauguration of US president Donald Trump.
Turkey began an unprecedented campaign inside Syria against ISIL and Kurdish militia in August last year which initially made rapid progress but has become mired in a deadly fight for Al Bab since December.
The fight for the town has been by far the bloodiest yet of Turkey’s incursion inside Syria but Ankara has vowed to press on until its capture despite a mounting casualty toll.
Five other Turkish soldiers were killed and 10 wounded in Al Bab on Thursday in clashes with ISIL militants, Turkey’s Dogan news agency reported.
Five Turkish soldiers were also killed in the same area on Wednesday.
Turkey and Russia have been on sharply opposing sides in the Syria conflict, with Moscow supporting the regime of president Bashar Al Assad and Ankara pushing for his ouster as the key to peace.
Relations reached a dangerous low in November 2015 when Turkish warplanes shot down a Russian fighter jet over the Syrian border.
But a normalisation deal was reached over the summer and the two sides have been working ever more closely over the Syrian conflict.
They secured a deal to evacuate Syrians from Aleppo after the city was retaken by pro-government forces, backed by Russia, and the two sides have since backed a peace process in the Kazakh capital, Astana.
Russian jets have also, on occasion, carried out air strikes in Al Bab in support of the Turkish operation.
Separate operations by Turkey and Mr Al Assad’s forces, backed by Moscow, have trapped the extremists inside Al Bab which has been besieged since Monday when pro-government fighters cut off a road leading into the town.
Turkish troops, backing Syrian opposition fighters, have entered Al Bab’s western outskirts and on Thursday the Syrian army secured a string of villages on the town’s southern edge, the state-owned Ikhbariyah news channel said.
There had previously been concerns over the risk of accidental contact in the busy skies above Syria but before Thursday these had usually surrounded Turkish and regime forces.
Mr Erdogan’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, said on Wednesday that Turkey had been coordinating with Russia to avoid any risk of contact with regime forces.
* Agence France-Presse, with additional reporting by Reuters and Associated Press