A passenger aircraft carrying about 50 people crashed on Thursday in a remote and densely forested area of Russia’s Far East, with all aboard reportedly killed.
The Soviet-era twin-propeller Antonov-24 plane went down in a thick jungle, and videos released by media and investigators show no signs of survivors at the crash site.
The Angara Airlines plane lost radar contact around 1 PM local time while flying from Blagoveshchensk to Tynda city. A rescue helicopter later found burning wreckage of the aircraft about 15 kilometers south of Tynda airport on a forested mountain slope.
Russian investigators released footage showing smoke rising from the crash site and scattered debris on the forest floor.
According to the government news agency TASS, search and rescue teams arrived several hours after the crash and found no evidence of survivors. The cause of the crash has not yet been disclosed.
Angara Airlines CEO Sergey Salamnov told Russia’s REN TV that weather conditions were poor at the time, but the pilot had decided to proceed with the flight.
Tynda, located about 200 kilometers from the Chinese border, is surrounded by dense taiga forest and has a population of around 30,000 people.
Chinese state media reported that at least one Chinese citizen was among the passengers.
