Turkish military plane 'vanishes'
20:36, 22 June 2012
ANKARA. June 22. KAZINFORM Turkey's military says it has lost contact with one of its military aircraft over the sea close to the border with Syria, Kazinform refers to BBC.
Turkish media said the plane had crashed into Syrian territorial waters.
However, eyewitnesses in the northern Syrian town of Latakia told BBC Arabic that Syrian air defences shot down an unidentified aircraft near the town of Ras al-Baseet.
The Turkish military said a search and rescue operation was now under way.
Radio and radar contact were lost after the plane took off from an airbase in Malatya province on Friday morning, a statement from the Turkish armed forces said.
Malatya governor Ulvi Saran told the state-run Anatolia news agency there were two pilots on the F-4 jet.