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On April 3, the bodies of several Turkish-backed Syrian militants who were killed fighting in Libya arrived in northern Syria.
According to the STEP News Agency, the militants’ bodies entered the Turkish-occupied part of the northern Aleppo countryside through the Hawar Kilis border crossing.
Local sources revealed that the bodies belong to six militants of the Suleiman Shah Brigade. The group is a part of the so-called Syrian National Army (SNA), Turkey’s main proxy in Syria.
In the last few months, Turkey deployed thousands of SNA militants in Libya to support forces loyal to the Government of National Accord (GNA). Ankara also shipped loads of weapons, including air-defense systems and combat drones, to the war-torn country.
A recent report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a London-based monitoring group, revealed that 156 Syrian militants have been killed while fighting for Turkey in Libya, thus far.
The deployment of Syrian militants failed to boost the position of GNA forces. This is pushing the Turkish military to play a more direct role in the ongoing conflict with the Libyan National Army (LNA).
