All 20 personnel who were on board a Turkish C-130 military cargo aircraft that crashed in Georgia have reportedly died. “Our heroic comrades-in-arms were martyred,” Defense Minister Yasar Guler said, taking to the social media platform. The planecrashed after taking off from Ganja, a city in Azerbaijan.
Meanwhile, the investigation is underway to inspect the wreckage at the crash site in the Sighnagi municipality of Georgia’s Kakheti district on Wednesday. As per the reports of Al Jazeera, Georgia’s Sakaeronavigatsia air traffic control services said that the aircraft disappeared from radar as soon as it entered the country’s airspace and reportedly did not send a distress signal before the crash.
Footage published by Azerbaijani media and Al Jazeera shows the aircraft oozing thick clouds of black smoke into the sky before crashing.
Türkiye and Azerbaijan share deep economic and cultural bonds and maintain close military collaboration, with Ankara providing weapons to Baku and training its officers. Recently, President Erdogan and other Turkish leaders attended Azerbaijan’s Victory Day celebrations in Baku on November 8, commemorating its 2020 military triumph over Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Georgian Foreign Minister Maka Botchorishvili said, “We are deeply shocked by the news of the loss of life of our soldiers in the accident that occurred on Georgian soil,” Aliyev said in a message, according to the Anadolu Agency.
The United States ambassador to Türkiye, Tom Barrack, also expressed his “deepest condolences” to Türkiye and the families of the dead.
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“We honor their service and are deeply grateful for all that the Turkish Armed Forces, and indeed all our men and women in uniform across the Alliance, do to keep us safe every day,” he said, taking to social media platform X. .
