Turkish tanks backed by drones and reconnaissance planes entered Syria overnight to evacuate several dozen Turkish soldiers guarding a tomb considered sovereign territory by Ankara and surrounded by ISIS insurgents.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said around 100 military vehicles, including 39 tanks, were involved and that the 38 soldiers guarding the tomb of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, had been brought safely home.
The military said there had been no clashes during the operation, the first such ground incursion by Turkish troops into Syria, but that one soldier had been killed in an accident.
Flanked by the chief of the military and the defense minister, Davutoglu told a news conference that Turkey had not sought permission or assistance for the mission but had informed allies in the coalition against ISIS once it began.
He said on his Twitter account that the remains of Suleyman Shah would be moved to a different area of Syria which had been brought under Turkish military control.
There was no immediate reaction from the Syrian authorities.
The Turkish government said late last year that ISIS militants were advancing on the mausoleum and had repeatedly vowed to defend it. The tomb was made Turkish territory under a treaty signed with France in 1921, when France ruled Syria.
ISIS and other terrorist groups, whose strict Salafi interpretation of Islam deems the veneration of tombs to be idolatrous, have destroyed several tombs and mosques in Syria.
