The Ankara government denounced an Israeli bombing that killed three Turkish citizens trying to enter Israeli territory from Lebanon, where the Israeli army has in recent days repeatedly violated the ceasefire.
The attack was confirmed by the Turkish foreign ministry, which in a statement quoted by the Anatolia news agency reported that ‘we have learned that three Turkish citizens with whom we had lost contact while they were trying to cross illegally from Lebanon into Israel, lost their lives as a result of an Israeli airstrike in the region,’ adding that the Turkish government was working to repatriate the bodies ‘as soon as possible’.
The ministry did not initially provide the identities of the deceased, but Turkish media reported on the basis of information provided by the victims’ relatives that they were Sezer Özdemir, Hüseyin Kaya and Çınar Alp Baydenk, who had not been heard from after going missing near the Lebanese-Israeli border on 11 January.
It appears that the three Turkish nationals had previously been deported from Israel, where they had been working illegally for 2-3 years; it was when they were trying to cross back from Lebanon into Israel through the Sheb’aa Farms region that they were lost track of. ‘We condemn in the strongest terms this illegal attack that has resulted in the death of our citizens,’ the statement from Ankara stressed, urging Israel to “immediately end its aggressive policies that have no regard for human life, and which escalate tension in the region”.
Israeli media confirmed that three unidentified individuals were killed in an airstrike when a group of approximately 20 people from several countries attempted to enter Israel on 11 January in a crossing organised by human smuggling mafias. Based on witness statements, it is believed that the group’s guide allegedly forced the three Turkish nationals to cross through an area of the border where the Israeli army was operating in order to ‘test’ whether the route was safe, at which point the Israeli bombing killed them.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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