Turkey’s armed forces command said on Wednesday that the bodies of the two Turkish pilots whose fighter plane F-4 jet shot down on June 22 by the Syrian air defense forces in the eastern Mediterranean were found at the bottom of the sea.
Military officials in Ankara said personnel were working on retrieving the bodies from the Mediterranean seabed.
"The bodies were located in the seabed and work is underway to pull them out of the water," said an online statement by Turkish General Staff.
Turkey’s armed forces named the pilots as Air Force Captain Gokhan Ertan and Air Force Lieutenant Hasan Huseyin Aksoy.
The incident has sparked outrage in Turkey, which deployed additional military forces including F-16 fighter jets on the Syrian frontier following the incident.
Meanwhile, Western powers seek to convince Russia to grant a political asylum to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, reports said Wednesday.
"Western countries, and primarily the United States, have been actively trying to persuade Moscow to host the Syrian leader and grant him political asylum," the Russian daily Kommersant reported, citing a Russian diplomatic source.
But, the source said, Russia, key ally of Damascus, "does not project to welcome" the head of the Syrian state. A source close to the Kremlin believed that the Syrian president had "about 10% chance of remaining in power."
In the meantime, a source in the Russian Foreign Ministry has dismissed those reports as a propaganda hoax, Vesti news reported.
"Political asylum to a foreign leader can only be considered if he requests it. As far as I know, Bashar Assad has not applied for it," the source added.
Furthermore, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that a delegation of the Syrian opposition was expected in Moscow next week - not this week as originally planned – within the efforts to end violence and encourage the opening of a dialogue. He did not specify the composition of the delegation.
Lavrov also said Russia would not participate in the meeting of the Friends of the Syria in Paris Friday, stressing that such a format was not necessary after the Geneva meeting.
Source: http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/20 12/07/04/224447.html
