Ukraine Military Plane Crash: Cadets Among At Least 22 People Killed (BBC)

Start Date: Friday, September 25, 2020

Last Modified: Thursday, October 1, 2020

End Date: Friday, December 31, 9999

KYIV (BBC) - At least 22 people, most of them air cadets, have been killed in a military plane crash in Ukraine, officials say.



The aircraft, an Antonov-26, came down near the eastern city of Kharkiv as it was landing.
 
The plane was carrying cadets from Kharkiv Air Force University and was on a training flight. Emergency ministry officials say 27 people were on board.
 
Two people were injured, and a search operation is continuing into the night for three missing people.
 
The cause of the crash is being investigated.
 
The plane came down about two kilometres (1.2 miles) from a military airport in the town of Chuhuiv, the emergency ministry officials say.
 
Fire broke out at the site and was later extinguished.


"It's a shock," Deputy Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko told AFP news agency. "At the moment it's impossible to establish the cause."
 
President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would travel to the region on Saturday, and that a commission was being created to investigate what happened.

 
Kharkiv regional governor Oleksiy Kucher said preliminary information suggested that one of the pilots had reported failure in one engine before the crash, but that this should not have been a critical situation, according to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.


An eyewitness told Reuters news agency he had seen a man in flames running from the wreckage.
 

"Another car stopped behind us. We took a fire extinguisher and ran with another driver to help him," he said.

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