A Turkish Cypriot official said Monday that a Syrian anti-aircraft missile that missed its target and reached ethnically divided Cyprus may have been the cause of an explosion outside a village in east Mediterranean island notion's breakaway north. No injuries were reported.
Kudret Ozersay, the north's foreign minister, posted on his personal Facebook account that an initial assessment of the pre-dawn blast indicated that a Russian-made missile that was part of an anti-aircraft battery had missed its target during overnight airstrikes in Syria.
Ozersay said the missile likely blew up in flight because there was no impact crater and pieces of the object were found several kilometres from the main debris field outside the village of Tashkent, or Vouno, as it's known by its Greek name.
He said the writing on debris matches that found on pieces of a Russian-made S-200 missile that crashed in Gaziantep, Turkey, in July 2018.
According to Turkish Cypriot broadcaster BRT, Prime Minister Ersin Tatar said no one was hurt in the explosion and that firefighting crews have contained a blaze that the burning debris had ignited.
