Burned alive

Beirut : The Islamic State jihadist group has released a video purportedly showing two captured Turkish soldiers being burned alive, after Ankara vowed to fight “terror” in Syria in response to 16 of its troops being killed in battle.

The 19-minute video, showing two uniformed men being hauled from a cage before being bound and torched, was posted on jihadist websites and was supposedly shot in the IS-declared “Aleppo Province” in northern Syria.

Speaking in Turkish, the killer of the two men criticises Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and calls for “destruction to be sowed” in Turkey.

The shocking images recall the killing of Maaz al-Kassasbeh, a Jordanian fighter pilot, who was captured by the jihadists when his plane went down in Syria in December 2014, and was later burned alive in a cage.

The IS-linked news agency Amaq said last month that the jihadists had kidnapped two Turkish soldiers, and the Turkish army separately said it had lost contact with two of its men.

The video’s release comes a day after 16 Turkish soldiers were killed by IS fighters in Ankara’s biggest loss so far in its unprecedented incursion into Syria.

They were killed in a succession of attacks around the Syrian town of Al-Bab on Wednesday that included three suicide car bombings.

The heavy toll showed the intensifying battle for the town, which Turkish forces have been seeking to capture for weeks in the biggest test of their four-month incursion into Syria.

At least 38 Turkish soldiers have been killed in the operation, which the Turkish government has dubbed Euphrates Shield.

Speaking earlier Thursday, Erdogan vowed no let-up in the ongoing campaign.

“Yes, maybe we will have to lay martyrs to rest,” he said in a speech in Ankara.

 “But we are determined to preserve their memory and protect what they left us and continue this struggle.”

Turkish television showed distraught relatives of the dead dealing with the news and putting national flags outside their homes.