The bodies of two Turkish soldiers who had been missing in northern Syria for more than a month have been returned to Turkey, state-run Anadolu news agency said on Tuesday.
The army had said on Nov. 29 that it lost contact with two of its personnel and on the same day there was an Islamic State (IS) claim that the militant group had kidnapped a pair of Turkish soldiers.
The two soldiers, identified by Anadolu as sergeants, were serving in the four-month-old 'Euphrates Shield' operation to drive Islamic State from the border and prevent a Kurdish militia seizing territory in their wake.
It was not clear how the soldiers had died. Kıvanç Kaşıkçı and Muhammed Duran Kesin were returned to their families after a funeral ceremony in the southeastern city of Gaziantep near the Syrian border.
A spokesman for a Syrian terrorist group called Hamza Brigade, suggested the troops' bodies had been returned in exchange for the release of IS prisoners.
Six IS captives held by the Hamza Brigade had been delivered to the jihadist group, he told the Haber Turk newspaper.
In recent weeks Turkish troops, supported by Syrian rebels, have been besieging the Islamic State-controlled town of al-Bab.
One of the soldiers was to be buried in the southern province of Adana on Tuesday and the other was to be buried in the northwestern province of Canakkale.
