A Russian firefighting plane has crashed in southern Turkey while it was participating in extinguishing the fires, killing its eight crew members.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that "5 crew members of the Russian military and 3 Turkish citizens - who were monitoring the hot spots - died."
And the Turkish state-run TRT channel reported that the plane crashed for an unknown reason shortly after it emptied water to put out a fire that broke out earlier in the Kahramanmaras area, and according to the official Anatolia News Agency, a large number of paramedics were sent to the place.
Russia leased the plane - a Beriev-200 - to the Turkish General Administration of Forests, which has been using it to fight massive fires that broke out in southern Turkey in recent weeks.
This incident comes at a time when Turkey has been facing several natural disasters for weeks, especially the fires in the south and floods in the north.
Eight people died in fires that broke out on the southern coast of the country in late July and early August.
This week, the authorities announced control of most of the fires, but new fires were reported in recent days in several areas such as Kahramanmaras and Çanakkale (west).