A Greek fighter pilot died in a crash after a mission to intercept Turkish jets

greek hellenic mirage 2000 jet air force

By stefg74 from Larisa, Greece Wikimedia Commons

• A Greek Mirage 2000-5 fighter jet crashed over the Aegean Sea on Thursday, multiple news outlets reported.

• Greece's defense minister has said the pilot is dead.

• Greek and Turkish planes often engage near their borders but are rarely armed and tend not to fire anything.

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A Greek Mirage 2000-5 fighter jet went down near the Aegean island of Skyros on Thursday, according to multiple reports, and Greece's defense minister has said the pilot is dead.

The Greek newspaper Kathimerini cited a source as saying the Mirage had been returning from a mission to intercept Turkish jets.

Both Turkish and Greek news outlets reported that a search-and-rescue operation by Greece's navy had been underway.

"An M2000-5, 9 nautical miles of Iskiri (Skiros) Island disappeared in the northeast" Turkey's Milliyet newspaper reported, quoting a statement from Greece's air force.

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According to the Milliyet report, Turkey's military said its jets were nowhere near the scene of the crash at the time.

Greece and Turkey frequently engage jets in dogfights over the Aegean Sea, but the planes are often unarmed and rarely fire missiles. 

The Mirage is a single-engine multirole aircraft from the 1970s employed by air forces across Europe.

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