A Turkish soldier was killed by a sniper shot from across the border in a Kurdish-controlled part of northwestern Syria, the Turkish military said on Wednesday.
The soldier was killed in the Turkish border province of Hatay. The Turkish military said in a statement that it had returned fire in retaliation after the soldier was killed.
Turkey fired into Kurdish-controlled Syria on Wednesday after saying one of its soldiers was killed by a sniper from across the border, risking deeper conflict with a Kurdish militia backed by the United States and building ties to Russia.
The Turkish military said the soldier was killed in the Turkish province of Hatay, across the border from Syria's Afrin, which is controlled by the Kurdish YPG militia. It said it returned fire in retaliation.
YPG spokesman Redur Xelil told Reuters that Russian forces which deployed to Afrin earlier this week had headed to the area shelled by Turkey. Russia's Defence Ministry was not available for immediate comment.
"We will certainly not stand with our hands tied in the face of any aggression and we will use the right to respond in the framework of legitimate self-defence," Xelil told Reuters in a written message.
Xelil said the Turkish army was the aggressor in Wednesday's incident and that Turkish shelling of border villages around Afrin had wounded 10 civilians.
The YPG is a military ally of the United States and is playing a major part in U.S.-backed operations against Islamic State in areas of Syria further to the east.
It has also built ties to Russia, and said this week that Moscow was setting up a military base in Afrin and would help train its fighters.
Turkey, which is a NATO member and part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, views the YPG as a terrorist organisation, an arm of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group fighting an insurrection in Turkey.
