Members of emergency services work at the site of the Turkish C-130 military cargo plane crash near the Azerbaijani border, in Sighnaghi municipality, Georgia.
Credit: Reuters photo
Twenty members of Turkey's air force were killed when a Turkish military cargo plane crashed in Georgia this week, the country's defense minister said Wednesday.
The C-130 cargo plane crashed on the border between Azerbaijan and Georgia on Tuesday afternoon, shortly after taking off from Azerbaijan to return to Turkey, according to the Turkish Defense Ministry. The C-130 is used by militaries around the world to transport personnel and equipment.
Yasar Guler, the Turkish defense minister, announced the deaths in a social media post Wednesday.
The plane took off from Ganja in northwest Azerbaijan and crashed in Georgian territory, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan said in a statement. Georgia lies northwest of Azerbaijan and northeast of Turkey.
Video widely shared on social media and verified by the news agency Storyful showed the rear section of a plane spinning as it descended, and crashing in a plume of smoke.
The aviation monitor Flightradar24 said a Turkish C-130 took off from Ganja on Tuesday and reached a cruising altitude of 24,000 feet. It said data from the flight "suggests a rapid descent during the last documented seconds of flight."
Flightradar24 said the plane, a C-130E built in 1968, was first delivered to the Royal Saudi Air Force. It entered service with the Turkish air force in 2010, the monitor said, citing records matching the plane's registration number.
Photos of the wreckage published by the Reuters news agency placed the crash site in Sighnaghi, a Georgian town about 30 miles from the Azerbaijani border.
The Turkish interior minister, Ali Yerlikaya, said on social media that his Georgian counterpart had traveled to the crash site. Georgia's Interpress news agency reported that authorities were investigating the crash.
It was not immediately clear what mission the Turkish service members were carrying out in Azerbaijan. The two countries have long-standing military relations.
Last week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey visited Baku, Azerbaijan's capital, on the fifth anniversary of the end of Azerbaijan's war against separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave.
Lockheed Martin, which manufactures the C-130 plane, did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent after business hours.