Turkey suffered heavy losses on Thursday during its offensive against a Kurdish militia in northwest Syria, with the military announcing that eight soldiers were killed and 13 more wounded.

The death toll, released by the Turkish military staff in two separate statements, makes Thursday one of the deadliest days for Ankara since launching its cross-border operation against the People's Protection Units (YPG) in Syria's Afrin region on 20 January.

"As part of the operations in Afrin, five of our heroic comrades fell as martyrs and seven were wounded" on Thursday, said the staff in a first statement.

Shortly after, it issued a second statement in which it announced that three more soldiers had been killed as well as six wounded, without giving details of the circumstances.