The Turkish military said that 10 warnings were issued in five minutes before a warplane of unknown nationality was shot down by two F-16 jets after breaching its airspace.
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In a statement, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday called the act a “stab in the back by the associates of terrorism”, and he said the jet had been shot down with surface-to-air missiles.
Before Putin’s statements came out, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said Turkish army’s downing of the Russian plane over Syria is “a very serious incident”.
Moscow said the fate of the two pilots was still unclear, while the Syrian opposition said one was dead and the other missing.
“Throughout its flight the plane remained exclusively over Syrian territory”.
“We are looking into the circumstances of the crash of the Russian jet”, Russia’s Defense Ministry said, The AP reported. Turkey’s private Dogan news agency said that witnesses said the warplane crashed over tents in a village and pilots landed with parachutes. Turkey’s semi-official Anadolu news agency cites Turkish Presidential sources in reporting that a Russian SU-24 was “hit within the framework of engagement rules” in Syria’s Bayirbucak area near the Turkish border. “God is great”, they say.
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation said its ruling council will hold an emergency meeting over the incident later on Tuesday, at Turkey’s request. “Our findings show clearly that Turkish airspace was violated multiple times”. This has happened even though an agreement is in place with the US-led coalition, which includes Turkey, to prevent incidences during air operations in Syria, Putin said.
A voice on the video is heard saying “a Russian pilot”, while another says: ‘The 10th Division has captured a Russian pilot. A rebel group has sent Reuters a video that it claims shows the bloodied body of one of pilots.
Russian Federation confirmed that one of its planes had been downed at an altitude of 6,000 metres but said it appeared to have been shot down from the ground.
In his remarks Tuesday, Putin mentioned a deconfliction agreement Moscow signed with Washington after Russian forces began bombing extremists in Syria last month in order to avoid unsafe clashes in a shared airspace.
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Russian jets have bombed the area in support of ground operations by Syrian government forces.
