KIEV, Sept 26 (NNN-AGENCIES) — At least 22 people including
military cadets were killed and two others were seriously injured on Friday
when a Ukrainian air force plane crashed near Kharkiv in the east of the
country, the interior ministry said.
Deputy Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko confirmed the death toll, describing the incident as a “shock”, and saying that the cause of the
crash was being investigated.
Footage of the crash released by officials on social media showed the
smouldering remains of the Antonov-26 transport plane.
“Most of [the dead] were students” of the Kharkiv National Air Force
University, the air force said in a statement.
There were 27 people on board, 20 cadets and seven crew, it added.
Twenty-two have been confirmed dead, two are injured and “the search for
three more people continues”, the emergency services said.
The injured are in a “critical” condition, regional governor Oleksiy Kucher
said on Facebook.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the crash as a “terrible
tragedy” and said he would travel to the Kharkiv region on Saturday.
“We are urgently creating a commission to investigate all the circumstances
and causes of the tragedy,” he wrote on Facebook.
The plane crashed at around 8:50 pm local time, two kilometres from the Chuhuiv military air base, the emergency services said.
In photos released by the emergency services, firefighters in helmets and
reflective clothing sprayed aircraft debris with jets of water.
The body of the plane burst into flames on landing and firefighters were
able to extinguish the blaze after an hour.
The town of Chuhuiv is around 30 kilometres southeast of Kharkiv and 100
kilometres west of the front line where government forces are fighting pro-
Russian separatists.
The presidency said that according to preliminary information the transport plane crashed during a training flight.
The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell sent his condolences on behalf of the
bloc.
“My thoughts are with the families and friends of those who lost their
lives,” he tweeted.
Several military planes have crashed in Ukraine during training flights in
recent years.
A pilot was killed in December 2018 after his Su-27 fighter crashed during
landing in the Zhytomyr region.
Two months earlier, the same model of fighter crashed in a neighbouring
region during the Clear Sky 2018 joint military exercises between Ukraine and NATO countries, killing the American and Ukrainian pilots on board.
In 2002, a Su-27 fell into the crowd at an airshow in Lviv in the western
Ukraine killing 77 people and injuring 165 others.
The Antonov-26 is a light transport aircraft designed in Ukraine during the
Soviet era.
It is 24 metres long and has a wingspan of 29 metres and can fly at a
cruising speed of 440 kilometres per hour.
In 2014, Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was downed killing 298 people over
an area of eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists.
Moscow has denied the findings of international investigators that a
Russian BUK missile hit the Malaysian Airlines flight. — NNN-AGENCIES
