MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Friday that Turkey had provided Russian forces with the target location for an air strike in Syria that accidentally killed three Turkish troops, but Ankara gave a different version of events.

“The situation is obvious, unfortunately. Our military while launching strikes on terrorists followed coordinates that were given to us by our Turkish partners,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.

Along with the three killed, 11 Turkish soldiers were wounded when Thursday’s strike -- which was meant to target jihadists -- hit a building where the troops were deployed, according to the Turkish army.

Peskov said the “causes of the incident are clear. There is no debate.”

He said there had been a communications failure, adding: “There should not have been Turkish soldiers within the limits of these coordinates. That’s why these strikes took place.”

But the Turkish military said communications had been in full operation and that the army had provided its Russian counterpart with the location of its units ahead of the incident.

“The Russian armed forces attache in Ankara was invited to the chief of staff headquarters and provided by hand with the coordinates” of the Turkish units on Wednesday, the military said in a statement on its website.

The coordinates of the Turkish troops were also shared with personnel at the Hmeimim airbase in Syria, Moscow’s main outpost for its bombing campaign in support of President Bashar al Assad, Ankara added.

Published in Dawn, February 11th, 2017