China has called for more global cooperation to fight terrorism. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said that Turkey's recent downing of a Russian warplane is a setback to the international fight against terrorism.

A Russian Su-24 bomber jet was shot down by Turkish F-16s in the Turkey-Syria border area on Nov. 24. For months, Russia has been conducting airstrikes on Islamic State targets inside Syrian territory. The downed Russian Su-24 bomber was targeting terrorist locations. Hong noted that the Russian plane was shot down while it was on a mission to destroy terrorist targets in Syria.  

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"The downing of the jet is a loss to the international effort to fight terrorism," Hong said, according to Chinese state media.

China wants more cooperation between countries so that such unfortunate incidents do not happen again. "China again calls on all parties to intensify coordination and cooperation in anti-terrorism and take effective measures to avoid similar unfortunate incidents," Hong said.   

Chinese specialists, along with experts from other countries, were recently invited by Russia to examine the black box of the Russian warplane that was shot down by Turkey, Hong said.

Meanwhile, Russia has said that the damaged black box is unreadable, and they are unable to retrieve information from it, according to Reuters.

Due to the internal damage, experts have been unable to "read out flight data," Sergei Bainetov, the Russian Air Force's deputy head of flight safety. He also said that 13 microchips of the flight recorder had been destroyed, and the remaining three had been damaged.  

TagsRussia, Turkey, Russian warplane shot down, Turkey downs Russian Su-24 bomber, China supports Russia against Turkey