Ongoing search and rescue efforts on the Kamchatka Peninsula for the plane with 28 people on board, local officials say.
A passenger plane carrying 28 people has left disappeared at the eastern end of the Kamchatka Peninsula, according to local media reports.
The plane, a twin-engine Antonov An-26 turboprop, was en route from the regional capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Palana, a city in northern Kamchatka, when it lost contact with air traffic control, the ministry said. of emergencies in Russia.
According to the ministry, there were 22 passengers and six crew on board.
Valentina Glazova, a spokeswoman for the local transport prosecutor’s office, told AFP news agency that “search and rescue efforts were being made.”
“All that is known at the moment, what has been established, is that communication with the plane was interrupted and did not land,” he said.
Here are the latest updates:
Search area set
Citing sources in the emergency ministry, the Russian state news agency Tass reported that the plane was being searched within a radius of 15-25 kilometers (9-15 miles) around Palana airport, with a focus on the Okhotsk Sea.
“The area has been determined approximately 15-25 kilometers from the airport, along the coast. It is also being searched at sea,” a source in the emergency ministry said.
“Objective data show that the plane crashed into the sea,” the source added.
Nen on board
The Kamchatka government released a list of 28 people on board the plane, including a child born in 2014.
Communication with the plane was said to have been lost nine kilometers (5.5 miles) from Palana Airport.
Cloudy
The weather in the area the plane was crossing was cloudy by the time it disappeared, the Interfax news agency reported, citing the local weather center.
The director of the airline says the plane was technically sound: report
The plane belonged to a company called Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise. The plane has been in operation since 1982, Tass reported. The director of the company, Alexei Khabarov, told the Interfax news agency that the plane was technically sound.
The plane crashed into the sea: report
Russia’s RIA news agency reported that the plane had crashed into the sea off the Kamchatka Peninsula as it prepared to land.
Several boats were heading to the crash site, RIA told emergency services.
Local official among the missing
Palana local government chief Olga Mokhireva was among the 22 passengers on board the plane, Russian news agency TASS said, according to local authorities.
Other reports citing local authorities said most of the passengers were from Palana (which has a population of about 3,000 people), including three other local government officials.
