A spokesman for the Turkish army said that another five soldiers were wounded in a rocket attack on the Turkish tanks.
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A senior Turkish official said three soldiers were killed and four wounded in the attack south of the border town of Al-Rai.
On Sunday, Turkish forces, supported by pro-Ankara rebels, pushed IS back from the last section of the worldwide border which it controlled.
Turkish Army soldiers walking by tanks near Turkish Syrian border of Karkamis.
The fight took place near the town of al-Rai, on the 14th day of an operation in northern Syria, according to Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News.
Two FSA fighters were also killed, while two others were wounded, the Turkish military said.
The Turkish fatalities came after Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels on Sunday expelled IS from the last strip of territory the militant group controlled along the Syrian-Turkish border, effectively sealing the extremists’ self-styled caliphate off from the outside world. The government says this has been completely secured in the weekend’s operation.
The area is west of Jarablus near the Turkish border which was taken from ISIL by the Ankara-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) at the start of the operation.
“We need to show we are present in the region”, said Erdogan.
Canikli also said that President Tayyip Erdogan had told U.S. President Barack Obama that he viewed a joint operation in Syria’s Raqqa positively.
The Kurdish YPG militia, backed by the United States, has captured large swathes of territory, alarming Turkey that has vowed to hit the terrorist group harshly.
Ankara fears the Kurds will create a contiguous autonomous zone in northern Syria, emboldening Kurdish separatists inside Turkey.
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Erdogan’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, revealed that the Turkish leader had met separately a second time with Russian and United States counterparts Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama before leaving the G20 meeting in Hangzhou. Turkey’s first declared casualty during the intervention came in that fighting.
