Large explosion as Nato military plane crashes in Georgia

A Turkish military plane has crashed in Georgia after taking off from Azerbaijan with 20 Turkish personnel on board, including the flight crew.

Harrowing video showed the C-130 cargo plane spiralling and trailing white smoke before hitting the ground and erupting in a plume of black smoke on Tuesday.

Search and rescue teams were working to reach the site, Turkey’s defence ministry said. The cause of the crash and the number of any casualties is unclear.

“A few minutes” after entering Georgian airspace, the aircraft “disappeared from radar without transmitting a distress signal”, the Georgian air navigation service said in a statement.

Georgia’s interior ministry said the plane had gone down “about 5km from Georgia’s state border” with Azerbaijan.

The country’s Interpress news agency said the plane had crashed in Sighnaghi, a municipality in the Kakheti region in eastern Georgia, bordering Azerbaijan. It said the incident was being investigated, with a search and rescue mission underway.

The plane was returning to Turkey when it crashed, Turkey’s defence ministry confirmed.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was handed a note by aides at the end of a speech in Ankara to inform him of the crash. He offered his condolences for “our martyrs”, referring to the personnel on the aircraft, without giving specific details of casualties.

“God willing, we will overcome this crash with minimum hardships,” he said. “May God rest the soul of our martyrs, and let us be with them through our prayers.”

Interpress cited the country’s Interior Ministry as saying the incident was being investigated under a criminal code article covering air transport and the loss of life.

Local media reports suggest that there were both Turkish and Azeri personnel on board, but did not cite numbers.

Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev expressed his condolences to President Erdogan, “the families and loved ones of the deceased, and the fraternal people of Turkey” in a call.

In an official readout, Aliyev said that he had discussed “the tragic news of the loss of servicemen” in the crash with Erdogan.

US firm Lockheed Martin, which makes the C-130 Hercules that is widely used by air forces around the world, said it is “committed” to supporting the investigation.

The C-130 Hercules is a cargo, troop and equipment carrier aircraft. It is described as a four-engine, turboprop military transport aircraft that can make use of unprepared runways for take-offs and landings.

Data from FlightRadar24 shows the aircraft was flying under call sign TUAF543.

Last month, Turkey reached an agreement with the UK to buy twelve second-hand C-130J military transport aircraft.