Ankara: Turkey on Monday sent back to Russia the corpse of a pilot killed when his plane was shot down by the Turkish air force for allegedly violating its air space on the Syrian border, reports said.

A special flight carrying the corpse of Oleg Peshkov left Ankara airport for Russia, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported, without giving further details.

His body had at the weekend been taken from Syria to southern Turkey and then flown to Ankara.

Both pilots aboard the Su-24 war plane ejected and parachuted to the ground on the Syrian side of the border after being shot down by Turkish F-16s in the 24 November incident.

Peshkov was killed in circumstances that have yet to be fully explained while the second pilot, Konstantin Murakhtin, was rescued unharmed and has already spoken to Russian media.