An aircraft carrying 28 people has crashed into the Sea of Okhotsk while preparing to land in Russia’s far east.
Russian emergency services located the area where the An-26 aircraft crashed into the sea on Tuesday morning after the plane went missing while preparing to land.
Several ships were on the way to the crash site, Russian news cited emergency services as saying. The plane had been en route to the village of Palana, near the Okhotsk Sea coast.
Local emergency officials said the aircraft with 22 passengers and six crew flying from the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Palana missed a scheduled communication.
It also disappeared from the radars, the local transport ministry said.
The plane was coming in for landing when contact was lost about 10km away from Palana’s airport.
The head of the government in Palana, Olga Mokhireva, was on board, the Kamchatka government said.
The plane belonged to a company called Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise.