A Turkish C-130 military cargo plane with at least 20 personnel on board crashed in Georgia after taking off from Azerbaijan on Tuesday, as authorities reported an unspecified number of casualties and said rescue workers were headed to the site.

President Tayyip Erdogan interrupted a speech in Ankara to offer condolences for “our martyrs” – a term he regularly uses to describe not only combat deaths but also service personnel killed in the course of their general duties.

Erdogan, his office and the ministry did not say what caused the crash, and they did not provide the number of casualties. Local media said, without citing numbers, that there were both Turkish and Azeri personnel on board.

After a call with Erdogan, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said, according to an official rea

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