A Swedish fighter jet crashed after colliding with a flock of birds in southern Sweden on Tuesday, authorities said, adding the pilot ejected safely.

“It was a bird collision and the pilot had to eject,” Johan Lundgren, spokesman at the Swedish Armed Forces told AFP.

The pilot was on a training mission in a Jas Gripen aircraft manufactured by Swedish aerospace company Saab.

The accident happened eight kilometres (five miles) north of a military air base near the southern Swedish city of Ronneby.

The pilot was taken to a hospital for a check-up.

Authorities said the accident happened in a forest area and no casualties were reported.

Sweden reports about 400 incidents where planes collide with birds every year, Charlotte Billgren at the Swedish Transport Agency told the TT news agency.

Saab Defence and Security is a major exporter of military material such as the Gripen fighter jet to the Czech Republic, Hungary, South Africa, Thailand and Brazil.

In 2017, a Gripen fighter jet crashed in Thailand during an air show. The pilot died.

And in 2015, another jet leased by Hungary skid off the runway at a Czech airbase and was completely damaged.