Syria shoots down Turkish warplane, apologises

BEIRUT,  (Reuters) – Syria shot down a Turkish warplane over the Mediterranean today, risking a new crisis between Middle Eastern neighbours already at bitter odds over a 16-month-old revolt against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said Syria had admitted it had shot down the plane and apologised, BBC Monitoring reported, citing Turkey’s state news agency Anatolia.

Turkey said earlier it had lost contact with one of its military aircraft off its southeastern coast after it took off from Erhac airport in the eastern province of Malatya.

Turkish officials said Erdogan, who was returning to Ankara from Brazil on Friday evening, would convene a security meeting with the interior and foreign ministers and the chief of general staff. They did not say what would be discussed.

Turkey’s military said a search and rescue operation was under way. Two crew were aboard the F-4 jet, Anatolia said.

NATO-member Turkey, which had drawn close to Syria before the uprising against Assad, turned against the Syrian leader when he responded violently to pro-democracy protests inspired by popular upheavals elsewhere in the Arab world.

Ankara has previously floated the possibility of setting up some kind of safe haven or humanitarian corridor inside Syria, which would entail military intervention, but has said it would undertake no such action without U.N. Security Council approval.

Russia and China, Assad’s strongest backers abroad, have fiercely opposed any outside interference in the Syrian crisis, saying envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan is the only way forward.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after talks with his Syrian counterpart that he had urged Syria to “do a lot more” to implement Annan’s U.N.-backed proposals, but that foreign countries must also press rebels to stop the violence.