NATO warplanes collided and Lithuania

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Jet fighter North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Lithuania on Tuesday (30 / 8), collide in a patrol in the Baltic country's. The pilot survived.

L-39 military aircraft Lithuania beat up a French Mirage jet in the air. Two pilots Lithuania managed to get out of the plane using the chair thrower and found no injuries, "says Ieva Gulbinine, assistant commander of the air base in Siauliai where a NATO air mission overseeing the Baltics, told AFP.

"The French military plane landed," he said.

According Gulbinine, the three Baltic states have no ability to control their own airspace. Therefore NATO planes from various countries to provide assistance that the alliance has a mandate until 2014.

"We regret this incident. We do not know the whole situation, an investigation has begun. We can only state that the victim can be avoided. Unfortunate incidents like this happen sometimes," said Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius told reporters on Monday.

"The Embassy of France is in direct contact degan Lithuanian authorities to find out the actual circumstances of the collision between a detachment of Mirage-2000 from France and one L-39 jet Lithuania," said the French embassy in the capital city of Vilnius, on Monday.

"France plane was also damaged, landed at Siauliai base," he added.

Lithania and ally of the Baltic republics, Latvia and Estonia, which gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, joined NATO and the European Union in 2004.

Three countries, the total population 6.8 million inhabitants and 20,500 professional military personnel, has uneasy relations with Russia, which only withdraw its troops from their areas in 1994. (Ant / ICH)