At least 22 people including military cadets were killed and two others seriously injured 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 told reporters,
“Twenty-two people died,” adding that “the search for two other people is continuing”.
The transport plane was carrying a total of 28 passengers when it crashed, including 21 military students and seven crew, he said.
He added, “It’s a shock, At the moment it’s impossible to establish the cause of the crash.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would travel to the region on Saturday.
The president wrote on Facebook, “We are urgently creating a commission to investigate all the circumstances and causes of the tragedy.”
The Antonov-26 transport aircraft crashed at around 8:50 pm local time (17:50 GMT), two kilometres (1 mile) from the Chuhuiv military air base.
The plane caught fire after the crash and was extingushed after one hour.
The town of Chuhuiv is around 30 kilometers southeast of Kharkiv and 100 kilometres west of the front line with the pro-Russian separatists.
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