Diyarbakir: A Turkish soldier on duty on the border with Syria shot dead two of his colleagues then killed himself late on Monday, the governor of the southern province of Sanliurfa said, dismissing suggestions they had been killed by cross-border fire.
The death of three soldiers close to where Daesh insurgents have battled Syrian Kurdish fighters had caused concern that they had been targeted from within Syria, or hit by stray bullets, which have crossed the border in the past.
“According to the evidence we have collected, it was not a terrorist incident but a soldier guarding the border running amok and killing his friends and then himself,” Sanliurfa governor Izzettin Kucuk told reporters.
Turkey has frequently seen spillover from Syria’s nearly four-year-old civil war, with Turkish soldiers being shot at and mortar rounds landing inside Turkish territory.
