Trending: World War III fears

MANILA, Philippines - The hash tag #WorldWarIII began trending on Tuesday after a Russian fighter jet was shot down by the Turkish military.

The world awaited to see how Russia would respond to the missile attack on their SU-24 jet, which is reportedly said to have flown into Turkish airspace for a short time on Tuesday morning.

NATO including the United States expressed support for treaty ally Turkey’s action.

Tweets bearing the hashtags #WorldWarIII and #WorldWar3 were posted by the thousands. Netizens expressed concern about the escalating tensions on their Twitter accounts. But there were also people who poked fun at the incident.

American Shawn Foreman posted a photo of Spam chopped pork and ham on his Twitter and captioned it “Spam sales shoot up 11,000 percent on news of World War III trending.”

Another netizen, Mark Towers said that the only reason World War III was trending was that people were tweeting about it trending.

Gen EMK from Brisbane, Australia, however, hoped the next world war will start after the showing of “Star Wars.”

“If you could just please refrain from starting World War 3 until after ‘Star Wars,’ that would be great,” Gen EMK tweeted.

Another one said: “At least World War 3 won’t last long, unless it is directed by Peter Jackson.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin lambasted Turkey, saying the incident was a “stab in the back by terrorist helpers,” as NATO held what it described as an “extraordinary meeting” Tuesday afternoon just hours after the incident.

Russia vehemently denied it was violating Turkish airspace, while Turkey – a NATO member – said it warned the aircraft 10 times before shooting it down.