ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Two Turkish soldiers who went missing in late November while they were deployed in northern Syria have died and their bodies have been brought back 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 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.

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.