Moscow, April 1: A Russian military transport plane has crashed into rocks in Crimea, killing all 29 people on board. The An-26 plane, which lost contact with the ground, crashed on a Black Sea island that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The Defense Ministry confirmed that 23 passengers and six crew members were killed. There were no reports of survivors.
Preliminary reports suggested that technical problems may have caused the crash, the RIA news agency reported. Russian defense officials declined to comment. The incident has raised new concerns about the safety of Russian military transport operations, which came amid heightened tensions in the region.
A search and rescue team has located the crash site of the An-26 plane. It suggests that factors such as missiles, drones or bird strikes were not involved. A military commission has been sent to investigate the cause of the crash.
The An-26, a light tactical transport aircraft introduced in the late 1960s, is widely used for both military and civilian purposes. It has suffered several accidents in recent years, including in Ukraine, South Sudan, and the Ivory Coast.
Crimea is a major peninsula on the northern coast of the Black Sea. Russia annexed the territory from Ukraine in 2014, a move widely considered illegal by most of the international community.
Russia calls it the Republic of Crimea and considers it part of its territory. The Kremlin maintains that it was wrongly ceded to Ukraine in 1954, which it has since corrected.