KIEV: 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 Interior Ministry said.
“Twenty-two people were killed,” Deputy Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko told AFP, adding that “the search for two other people continues.”
The transport plane was carrying a total of 28 passengers when it crashed, including 21 military students and seven crew members, it said.
“It’s a shock,” he added. “At the moment it is impossible to establish the cause” of the accident. ”
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would travel to the region on Saturday.
“We are urgently creating a commission to investigate all the circumstances and causes of the tragedy,” he wrote on Facebook.
The Antonov-26 transport plane crashed around 8:50 p.m. local time (17:50 GMT), two kilometers (1 mile) from the Chuhuiv military airbase, emergency services said.
The plane caught fire after the accident and was destroyed after an hour.
The city of Chuhuiv is about 30 kilometers southeast of Kharkiv and 100 kilometers west of the front line with the pro-Russian separatists.
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