ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Syria's state-run SANA news agency confirmed that the army has lost communication with a fighter jet on the Syrian-Turkish border and that search is in progress to find the pilot, citing a military source.
Earlier the Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that a fighter jet, believed to be Syrian, had "crashed" on the border with Syria.
Ahrar al-Sham, an armed Syrian rebel group, released a video claiming to show the moment their forces shot down the jet in the northern province of Idlib, inside Syria, close to the Turkish border.
PM Yildirim said he did not know who the jet belonged to, but theorized it may be Syrian. He was not sure whether it happened inside Syrian or Turkish airspace.
“There is information that a MiG modeled plane estimated to be belonging to the Syrian regime crashed in Hatay, Samandağ, Yaylacık region,” Yildirim said referring to a southern province in Turkey on the Turkish border with Syria. “There is information that the pilot jumped from the plane. Our units there are helping the search efforts,” Yıldırım said, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency (AA).
Yıldırım said that the exact whereabouts of the incident and its cause are yet to be determined after examining the incident.
“There is no clarity on that issue. It can be in our border or Syrian border, that will be clear after the examinations. There is also no clarity on the reason for why it crashed, but there are reports that the weather conditions were rather unfavorable,” he said.
The video released by the Ahrar al-Sham shows a heavy machine gun being fired at a fighter jet in the sky during foggy weather, but it does not show subsequent events.
Hatay Governor Erdal Ata, earlier said that Turkish police and medical teams have been dispatched to the area where it is believed the crash took place, also saying that it may have been a Syrian fighter jet.
Ata said that the pilot may be alive.
“It was seen that the cockpit place of the plane was empty,” he said based on the initial findings by the local authorities after inspecting the place, “We think that the pilots survived by jumping,” Ata continued, according to AA.
Ata also told the Turkish agency that they have received confirmation that no violation of Turkish airspace has been made.
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