A TURKISH military plane with at least 20 people on board has crashed in Georgia close to the border with Azerbaijan, Turkiye’s Defence Ministry has said.
There were no immediate reports on the number of casualties or the cause of the accident involving a C-130 cargo plane, which had taken off from the Azerbaijani city of Ganja on Tuesday.
However, both Turkiye and Azerbaijan, which are close allies, have indicated that there have been fatalities.
Turkiye’s Defence Ministry said 20 Turkish personnel, including flight crew, were on the C-130 plane, but did not mention possible passengers of other nationalities.
Local media said that Azerbaijani personnel were also travelling on the United States-made aircraft, which was heading back to Turkiye when it crashed.
Dramatic footage published by Azerbaijani media appeared to show the aircraft sending a large cloud of black smoke into the sky after it hit the ground.
Turkiye’s Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said his Georgian counterpart, Gela Geladze, arrived at the scene at around 5pm local time (14:00 GMT). Search and rescue operations were ongoing, he added.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who said he was “deeply saddened” by the crash, expressed his condolences to those who had been killed.
“We are deeply shocked by the news of the loss of life of our soldiers in the accident that occurred on Georgian soil,” said Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, according to Turkiye’s state-run Anadolu Agency.
The plane went down in the Sighnaghi area of the Kakheti region about 5km (3.1 miles) from the Georgian-Azerbaijani border, the Georgian interior minister confirmed.
Meanwhile, the country’s Sakaeronavigatsia air traffic control service said the aircraft disappeared from radar soon after entering the country’s airspace. It sent no distress signal prior to the crash, it added.
Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Turkiye, expressed his support to the families of the victims, saying that his country “stands in solidarity with our Turkish allies”.
