ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey’s defence ministry said on Thursday it was too early to say what caused the crash this week of a military cargo plane in Georgia in which 20 soldiers died, and inspections continue.
The C-130 cargo aircraft had left Azerbaijan for Turkey and crashed on Tuesday, an incident marking the NATO member’s highest military death toll since 2020.
At a briefing in Ankara, the ministry said the aircraft was bought from Saudi Arabia in 2012 and had gone through necessary modernisations, including its last maintenance a month ago. It was not carrying ammunitions on its last flight, it added.
However, the ministry said all planned flights by Turkey’s 18 C-130 planes had been suspended pending inspections, and that the black box of the crashed plane was being analysed.
(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Jonathan Spicer)
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