A Turkish soldier who was shot by masked men has died of his wounds, the army said on Thursday, the latest killing of a member of the security forces in the Kurdish-majority southeast of the country.

Non-commissioned officer Nejdet Aydogdu was shopping with his wife in Turkey's biggest Kurdish-populated city of Diyarbakir Wednesday afternoon when he was fired at by two masked gunmen at close range.

Heavily armed Iraqi peshmerga forces reached the Turkish border Thursday and a first group entered the town of Kobane as they prepared to join fellow Kurds battling the Islamic State group.

The group of 10 fighters were to coordinate with local Kurdish militia who have been holding off an assault by IS jihadists for six weeks, a monitoring group said.

U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Derek Plumbly ruled out the naturalization of Syrian refugees, denying international pressure to keep the displaced in Lebanon.

In remarks to As Safir daily published on Thursday, Plumbly said: “The issue of the naturalization of the Syrian refugees is out of the question.”

A Turkish soldier was on Wednesday fighting for his life in hospital after being shot by two masked gunmen in Turkey's biggest Kurdish-populated city of Diyarbakir in the southeast of the country, the army said.

Non-commissioned officer Nejdet Aydogdu was out shopping with his wife in central Diyarbakir when he was fired at by the gunmen at close range, it said in a statement.

A 14-year-old boy in Austria was remanded in custody Wednesday after telling police he planned to plant a bomb in a public area and join jihadists in Syria, authorities said.

The unnamed boy, a Turkish citizen living in Austria for at least the past eight years, had been under investigation since early October and was arrested on Tuesday, police said.

Hopes faded Wednesday of finding alive 18 Turkish coal miners trapped when their shaft was engulfed by water, as rescue workers made last-ditch efforts to find survivors.

The accident in southern Turkey was the latest to hit the country's disaster-prone mining industry after 301 workers were killed in a coal mine explosion in May.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday unveiled a new presidential palace on the outskirts of Ankara that has been denounced as an environmental blight and evidence of his autocratic tendencies.

Erdogan hosted his first official event at the new palace, a ceremony congratulating dignitaries on the annual Republic Day marking the foundation of modern Turkey in 1923 out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.

U.S. warplanes renewed air strikes against Islamic State jihadists near the Syrian town of Kobane, as Iraqi peshmerga soldiers prepared to reinforce their fellow Kurds in the border area, the U.S. military said on Wednesday.

U.S. fighter jets and bombers on Tuesday and Wednesday carried out eight air raids near Kobane, targeting six vehicles, a building and several IS fighting positions over the past 24 hours, said the military's Central Command, which oversees the air war in Iraq and Syria.

The Change and Reform parliamentary bloc on Tuesday hailed the “preemptive operation” waged by the army in the northern regions of Tripoli and Minieh, calling for completing the security plan until the eradication of “all hubs of crime and terrorism.”

“We hope that the phenomenon of (fugitive Fatah al-Islam chief Shaker) al-Absi will not be replicated in Tripoli and Minieh,” ex-minister Salim Jreissati said after the bloc's weekly meeting, which was held only hours after bloc chief MP Michel Aoun met with Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan and Speaker Nabih Berri.

Some 20 miners were trapped in a coal mine in southern Turkey on Tuesday after a portion of the mine collapsed due to a build-up of water, officials said.

There were 40 miners underground at the time of the accident in the district of Ermenek in the southern province of Karaman, the regional governor Murat Koca told Turkish television.