At least 22 people including military cadets were killed and two others seriously injured Friday when a Ukranian air force plane crashed near Kharkiv in the east of the country, the interior ministry said.
“Twenty-two people died,” Deputy Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko told AFP, adding that “the search for two other people is continuing”.
The Antonov An-26 aircraft crashed while trying to land during a training exercise, the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Ruslan Khomchak, said in a statement.
Khomchak added that at least two more people were critically injured.
A video posted by Deputy Interior Minister, Anton Gerashchenko, on Facebook showed the plane in flames lying near a road and smoke billowing upwards in the night sky.
Pictures taken later showed rescue workers inspecting the wreckage near the town of Chuhuiv.
An investigation has started on what caused the crash.
One pilot reported failure in the left engine of the twin-engine plane, said Oleksiy Kucher, the governor of the Kharkiv region, according to Interfax Ukraine.
