Two Turkish police officers killed by blast in Syrian town under occupation

Two Turkish police officers and a local police officer were killed on Sunday by an explosion in Syria's Turkish-occupied town of Tel Abyad, Turkey's state news agency AA reported.

Eleven others, seven of them Turkish police officers, were injured by the blast that took place as the police were trying to defuse explosives, AA said.

According to a report by Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the explosion was caused by a land mine that went off in Al-Raqqa countryside near Tel Abyad.

Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said that the two Turkish fatalities were members of police special ops, and that the injured were taken to hospitals for treatment in Turkey's southern border province of Urfa.

Kurdish-led militia was driven out of Tel Abyad and the town was occupied in October 2019 by the Turkish army and armed factions under proxy Syrian National Army.

The mayor of Urfa province appointed a district mayor to Tel Abyad after the occupation in a move by Ankara to establish full authority in the town and to ensure its total integration into Turkey.