A Russian aircraft deployed to Turkey to fight wildfires crashed on Saturday, killing all eight people on board, officials said.
According to state news agency TASS, the aircraft’s five crew members were Russian, and three Turkish nationals were also on board, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
The Be-200 amphibious aircraft crashed as it was due to land near the southern city of Adana.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tweeted he was greatly saddened by the deaths and said their heroic sacrifices would not be forgotten. Turkey has fought some 300 wildfires in the last 16 days that have killed eight other people, consumed forests and homes and sent thousands fleeing.
Kahramanmaras governor Omer Faruk Coskun told Anadolu that a wildfire had begun after lightning struck trees.
We had dispatched a plane to the area, but we lost communication with the plane a while ago, and it crashed, the governor said.
“We sent a large number of trams to the area where the plane crashed,” he added.
According to TASS, the plane was sent by Russia to Turkey on July 8 to help douse wildfires that have swept across the country in recent weeks.
Images of the crash site released by DHA Turkish News Agency showed charred wreckage littered across mountainous terrain with only the aircraft’s tail intact.
A commission from the Russian Defense Ministry has been sent to the crash site to establish the causes of the accident.
Turkey is one of many countries around the Mediterranean Sea that has battled devastating wildfires as the region experiences a relentless heatwave. At least eight people have been killed in the fires in Turkey, while more than 30 have died in floods in the northern provinces near the Black Sea in recent days.
Scientists say the climate crisis is making heatwaves, fires and flooding more regular and intense.
