According to the official Turkish Anadolu Agency, the firefighting plane crashed while extinguishing the fires in the state of Kahramanmaras.

The National Forestry Administration said the B-200 plane, chartered by Turkey from Russia, crashed near the eastern city of Kahramanmaras.

Turkish local media said that none of the eight crew members, six Russians and two Turkish citizens, survived.

Turkey's forests are blazing, the worst fire crisis in a decade, along Turkey's Mediterranean and Aegean coasts, one of the country's main tourist spots.

Rescue boats are also on alert along the coast of Marmaris to evacuate anyone if the fires continue to spread.

Strong winds and rising temperatures in southern Europe fanned the devastating fires. Experts say climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of such fires.

Fires are not a strange event in Turkey, but rather something that recurs annually, especially in the hot summer in a large number of its provinces. According to the General Directorate of Forests, Turkey witnessed 26,311 forest fires between 2011-2020, which destroyed about 90,956 hectares of forest land.

However, the fires that the country has witnessed this year (2021) - since the end of last July - seem unprecedented in view of their number, areas of spread, time taken, as well as the losses they caused.