At least 22 people, including military cadets, were killed. (Representative)
Kiev, Ukraine:
At least 22 people, including military cadets, were killed and two others seriously injured on Friday when a Ukrainian air force plane crashed near Kharkiv in the east of the country, the Ukrainian air force said. Ministry of the Interior.
“Twenty-two people are dead,” Deputy Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko told AFP, adding that “the search for two more people is continuing”.
The transport plane was carrying a total of 28 passengers when it crashed, including 21 military students and seven crew members, he said.
“It’s a shock,” he added. “At the moment, it is not possible to establish the cause of ‘the crash’.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would visit the region on Saturday.
“We urgently create a commission to investigate all the circumstances and causes of the tragedy,” he wrote on Facebook.
The Antonov-26 transport plane crashed at around 8:50 p.m. local time (5:50 p.m. GMT), two kilometers (1 mile) from the Chuhuiv military air base, emergency services said.
The plane caught fire after the crash and was extinguished after an hour.
The city of Chuhuiv is about 30 kilometers southeast of Kharkiv and 100 kilometers west of the front line with pro-Russian separatists.
