A Russian An-26 military transport plane crashed into a cliff in Crimea, killing 29 people on board, Russian news agencies reported the country’s defence ministry as saying early on Wednesday.
Tass news agency, quoting the ministry, said the crash site was located in Crimea, a peninsula jutting into the Black Sea, annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014. The ministry said 23 passengers and six crew members had been killed.
“On 31 March at around 18:00 Moscow time, contact was lost with the An-26 military transport aircraft whilst it was on a scheduled flight over the Crimean Peninsula,” the defence ministry said.
“The An-26 aircraft, with which communication was lost earlier, crashed into a cliff, it was reported to Tass from the site of the crash,” Tass reported.
RIA news agency said according to an initial assessment, technical problems were believed to have caused the crash.
The An-26 has been in service since the late 1960s and has also been used by airlines to carry freight, but the model has been involved in a number of deadly crashes over the last decade.
A Ukrainian An-26 crashed during a technical flight in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhia region in 2022, killing one person. Another aircraft crashed on a training flight in northeastern Ukraine in 2020, killing all but one of the 27 people on board.
Eight people, including five Russians, were killed when an An-26 crashed in South Sudan in 2020 and four of 10 people on board were killed when an An-26 crashed on landing in Ivory Coast in West Africa in 2017.
