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Search underway after passenger plane disappears in Russian Far East
The An-26 was flying from Kamchatka's main city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to the coastal town of Palana when it disappeared at 2:40 pm (0240 GMT), Valentina Glazova, a spokeswoman for the local transport prosecutor's office, told AFP.
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This handout photograph released by the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry on July 6, 2021, shows Russian An-26 aircraft with the tail number RA-26085 on the apron at the airport of Patropavlovsk-Kamchatckiy. Contact has been lost with a passenger plane carrying more than two dozen people in Russia's Far Eastern peninsula of Kamchatka, local officials said July 6, 2021. (AFP/Handout)
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wide-ranging search was underway Tuesday, hours after a passenger plane carrying 28 people disappeared in Russia's remote Far Eastern peninsula of Kamchatka.
The An-26 was flying from Kamchatka's main city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to the coastal town of Palana when it disappeared at 2:40 pm (0240 GMT), Valentina Glazova, a spokeswoman for the local transport prosecutor's office, told AFP.
"Search and rescue efforts are underway," she said. "All that is known at this time, what has been possible to establish, is that communication with the plane was interrupted and it did not land."
She said the plane had been operated by a local aviation company in Kamchatka, a vast peninsula on Russia's Pacific coast popular with adventure tourists for its abundant wildlife and live volcanoes.
Russian news agencies quoted local officials as saying most of the passengers were from Palana -- which has a population of about 3,000 -- including four local government officials and the town's head Olga Mokhiryova.
Kamchatka's government published a list of 28 people who were on board the plane, including Mokhiryova and one child born in 2014.
Officials said that communication with the plane had been lost nine kilometres (5.5 miles) from Palana's airport and 10 minutes before its scheduled landing time.
Citing emergency ministry sources, news agencies reported that a search for the plane was underway with a radius of 15-25 kilometres (nine-15 miles) around the airport, with a focus on the Okhotsk Sea.
"There is objective evidence that the plane crashed and fell into the sea," a source told news agency TASS.
