Turkey sent between 3,500 and 3,800 paid Syrian fighters to Libya over the first three months of the year, the US Defense Department’s inspector general concluded in a new report, its first to detail Turkish deployments that helped change the course of Libya’s ongoing war.

The report comes as the conflict in oil-rich Libya has escalated into a regional proxy war fueled by foreign powers pouring weapons and mercenaries into the country.

The quarterly report by the Pentagon’s internal watchdog, published on Thursday, said Turkey paid and offered citizenship to thousands of mercenaries fighting alongside Tripoli-based forces against east-based commander Khalifa Haftar’s troops.

Despite widespread reports of the fighters’ extremist links, it said the U.S. military found no evidence to suggest the mercenaries were affiliated with the ISIL group or al-Qaeda, and that they instead were “very likely” motivated by generous financial packages – rather than ideology or politics.

The report covered only the first quarter of the year, until the end of March.

The reversal of fortunes for Haftar and his foreign backers, including Egypt, Russia and the United Arab Emirates, trained the spotlight on Turkey’s deepening role in the proxy war.

Source: Agencies