The Russian defense ministry announced early on Wednesday that a military transport plane, the An-26, may have experienced a mechanical issue and crashed onto a cliff in Crimea, killing all 29 persons on board. This information was reported by news agencies.
According to TASS, which cites the ministry, the plane became silent during a scheduled flight over Crimea on Tuesday at around 6 p.m. local time. Following its 2014 annexation from Ukraine, the mountainous peninsula stretched out before Russia’s fingers reached the Black Sea coast.
A search team located the site of the disaster,” TASS reported, citing the military ministry. “According to a report from the site, six crew members and 23 passengers on board were killed. No survivors were mentioned in the ministry report, which did not specify the number of persons on board the An-26. This particular aircraft has been a workhorse for decades, capable of carrying cargo and up to 40 passengers over short to medium distances.
The An-26 has been operational since the late 1960s and has also been utilized by airlines for freight transport; nonetheless, the model has been involved in multiple fatal accidents within the past ten years.
In 2022, one person lost their life when a Ukrainian An-26 plane went down in the southeast region of Zaporizhzhia while on a technical flight. In 2020, twenty-seven out of thirty-seven individuals on board an aircraft crashed during a training trip in the northeastern region of Ukraine.
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