Crashed Turkish plane shot down by Syrian air defenses - eyewitness

PanARMENIAN.Net - Turkey's military says it has lost contact with one of its aircraft over the sea close to the border with Syria, BBC News said.

Turkish media said the plane, an F-4 jet, crashed in Syria or Syrian territorial waters.

The two pilots were found alive, CNN Turk and the Hurriyet newspaper said.

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 aircraft.

Earlier, 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.

Relations between Turkey and Syria, once close allies, have deteriorated sharply since the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011.

Turkey is sheltering more than 32,000 refugees from Syria, according to figures published on Friday by the UN refugee agency UNHCR.