Pilots from downed Russian jet alive: Turkish official

Moscow/Sochi - Russian President Putin had called Turkey's downing of Russian jet 'stab in the back'.

The two pilots who ejected from a Russian war plane downed by Turkey on the Syrian border are believed to be alive and Turkish authorities are seeking to recover them, a government official said on Tuesday.
"Turkey has information that the two pilots are alive and right now Turkey is trying to recover them," the official told AFP, after reports that at least one of the pilots could have died after parachuting down inside Syria.
In Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov just said "there is no official information" about the fate of the pilots from the downed plane.
CNN-Turk television said Syrian Turkmen forces fighting the Damascus regime had captured one of the pilots while Syrian opposition sources told AFP one had been killed by rebels and the second was missing.
In a separate incident, sources told AFP in Beirut that a Russian helicopter in the same area in Syria was destroyed by rebels on the ground after being forced to make an emergency landing following damage from rebel fire.
A Syrian military source told AFP that a unit of Syrian regime special forces saved the dozen-strong Russian commando team and brought them back to the regime stronghold of Latakia.
'Stab in the back'
President Vladimir Putin called Turkey's downing of a Russian fighter jet a stab in the back administered by "the accomplices of terrorists," saying the incident would have serious consequences for Moscow's relations with Ankara.
Speaking in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi on Tuesday before a meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah, Putin said the downed plane had been attacked inside Syria when it was 1 kilometre (0.62 miles) from the Turkish border and had come down 4 kilometres (2.49 miles) inside Syria.
That contradicted Turkey's assertion that the aircraft had been warned multiple times that it was straying into Turkish airspace before it was shot down.
"Today's loss is linked to a stab in the back delivered to us by accomplices of terrorists. I cannot qualify what happened today as anything else," said a visibly furious Putin.
"Our plane was shot down on Syrian territory by an air-to-air missile from an F-16. It fell on Syrian territory 4 kilometres from the Turkish border. It was flying at 6,000 metres 1 kilometre from Turkish territory when it was attacked."
Putin said Russian pilots and planes had in no way threatened Turkey, but had merely been carrying out their duty to fight Daesh militants inside Syria.
"We established a long time ago that large quantities of oil and oil products from territory captured by Daesh have been arriving on Turkish territory," he said, saying that was how militants had been funding themselves.
"And now we get stabbed in our back and our planes, which are fighting terrorism, are struck. This despite the fact that we signed an agreement with our American partners to warn each other about air-to-air incidents and Turkey ... announced it was allegedly fighting against terrorism as part of the U.S. coalition."
If Daesh militants earned hundreds of millions of dollars from trading oil and enjoyed the protection of the armed forces "of entire governments" no wonder, said Putin, they behaved so boldly.
"We will of course analyse everything that happened and today's tragic events will have serious consequences for Russo-Turkish relations," he said.
Turkey is one of the most popular holiday destinations for Russians, and the two countries enjoy active diplomatic relations.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is due to visit Turkey on Wednesday, in a trip arranged before the incident, while Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan is scheduled to visit Russia for talks with Putin in December.
Putin expressed anger at Turkey's decision to convene a meeting of NATO to discuss the incident, suggesting Ankara should instead have swiftly tried to contact Moscow.
"It's as if we shot down a Turkish plane rather than them shooting down one of ours. What do they want? To put NATO at Daesh's disposal? We will never tolerate such crimes like the one committed today."
Earlier today, a foreign warplane was reported shot down by Turkey near the Syrian border on Tuesday violated Turkish air space despite being warned 10 times in the space of five minutes, the Turkish military said in a statement.
Two Turkish F-16 jets on patrol duty along the border were involved in the downing of the warplane, whose origin was unknown, the military statement said.