Türkiye’s Defense Ministry announced Wednesday that 20 people on board the C-130 Hercules military plane that crashed in Georgia a day earlier had died. For several hours there had been no official confirmation and there were still many doubts about how the accident occurred and what caused it. A team of Turkish investigators arrived at the scene on Wednesday.
In the video circulating online, the plane can be seen falling and twisting. The C-130 aircraft is manufactured by the US company Lockheed and is used to transport material and troops. This plane is quite large and has four turboprop engines (so unlike almost all modern passenger planes, it is not a jet plane).
The plane was returning to Turkey after operations in Azerbaijan and crashed 27 minutes after takeoff in Sighnaghi, a Georgian municipality in the east of the country very close to the border with Azerbaijan. The 20 soldiers on board were part of the air force and were all officers, and among them were pilots and maintenance managers.
