A Hellenic Air Force Mirage 2000 reportedly crashed on Thursday just after noon (11.00 GMT) near the the central Aegean island of Skyros, which hosts a military air base.
According to media reports, the French-made fighter plane heading for a landing after intercepting Turkish warplanes that had entered the Athens FIR without a flight plan – an ubiquitous Turkish provocation in the Aegean over the past decades. In response to a bevy of sensationalist internet postings by Turkish-language media, the Turkish military quickly issued an announcement saying that none of its warplanes were in the region where the Greek plane went down.
The plane went down in a sea region some nine nautical miles northeast of the island.
No information was available on the fate of the pilot or the reasons for the crash, while a search and rescue mission is underway.
