All 20 personnel on board a military cargo plane that crashed in Georgia were killed, Turkey's defense minister announced on Wednesday.

The C-130 plane had taken off from Ganja, Azerbaijan and was on its way back to Turkey when it crashed on Tuesday in Georgia’s Sighnaghi municipality, close to the Azerbaijani border.

The cause of the crash is being investigated.

A Turkish accident investigation team reached the crash site early on Wednesday and was inspecting the wreckage of the plane, in coordination with the Georgian authorities, the National Defense Ministry said.

The wreckage was spread across a plain that includes farmland and is surrounded by hills, Turkish private broadcaster NTV reported from the site.

Debris from the aircraft was scattered across multiple locations, the report said.

On Tuesday, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency quoted the Georgian aviation authority as saying that contact with the plane was lost a few minutes after it had entered Georgia’s airspace.

The plane had not issued a distress signal, it said.

C-130 military cargo planes are widely used by Turkey’s armed forces for transporting personnel and handling logistical operations.

AP video shot by: Zurab Tsertsvadze