Turkish border guards shot and killed a Syrian civilian and injured two others when they opened fire on a group approaching the border, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on Thursday.
The body of the dead civilian was reportedly dumped back into Syrian territory on Thursday after Turkish forces prevented anyone from approaching the scene of the shooting for several days.
The latest killing adds to a growing list of civilian casualties attributed to Turkish border guards.
Casualties have been recorded in various regions along the border. Six civilians, including one child, were killed in areas controlled by Hayyaat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), an extremist Islamist militant group that controls parts of northwestern Syria, primarily in Idlib province. HTS has been involved in the Syrian civil war since its inception and has ties to al-Qaeda.
Two civilians have been killed in areas under the control of Operation Peace Spring, a Turkish military operation launched in October 2019 to create a “safe zone” along the Turkish-Syrian border by driving out Kurdish forces from the region. The operation primarily targeted areas held by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led coalition of militias that has been a key partner of the United States in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Syria. The SDF controls significant portions of northeastern Syria and operates semi-autonomously from the Syrian government.
One civilian fatality has been reported in regions controlled by the Manbij Military Council Forces, a group aligned with the SDF that administers the city of Manbij in northern Syria. Meanwhile, two civilians have been killed in SDF-controlled areas, with incidents reported in Kobani and the Al-Hasakah countryside.
Since 2011 Syria’s civil war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions.
Syria shares a long border with Turkey, which hosts some 3.6 million registered Syrian refugees, according to the UN’s refugee agency.
Despite officially closing its border with Syria, Turkey over the years has regularly allowed access for humanitarian and medical reasons, and at times has allowed Syrians to return home for family visits during major holidays.
But since two devastating February 6, 2023 earthquakes hit Turkey, affecting Syria and killing thousands, Ankara has reinforced border restrictions.
Turkish gendarmes in charge of border control routinely abuse and indiscriminately shoot at Syrians along the Syrian-Turkish border, with hundreds of deaths and injuries recorded in recent years, Human Rights Watch reported in April 2023.
