KHARKIV-(MaraviPost)-At least 22 people including military cadets were killed Following Ukrainian air force crash near Kharkiv in the east of the country.
Deputy interior minister Anton Gerashchenko confirmed the tragedy on Friday.
Report by The Guardian indicated that the military plane with 27 people on board, 20 cadets and seven crew members was carrying aviation school students before it crashed and burst into flames on Friday while landing at the airport in Chuhuiv, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of the capital Kyiv.
The twenty-two victims were confirmed dead at the scene with two injured and three still missing and Kharkiv national air force University in a statement revealed that most of the dead were students.
Although it is currently unclear what led to the incident but the recorded footage from the scene showed the aircraft engulfed in flames by the side of a road during the crash.
The president Volodymyr Zelenksy of the country has expressed his condolences in a statement describing the incident as “a terrible tragedy”.
Zelensky added that he will visit the scene of the incident and he will create a government commission to investigate all circumstances surrounding the tragedy immediately.
Several military planes have crashed in Ukraine during training flights in recent years. In December 2018, a Su-27 fighter crashed during landing in the Zhytomyr region killing the pilot on board.
Two months prior to the incident, American and Ukrainian pilots were killed in a neighbouring region when the same model of fighter crashed during the Clear Sky 2018 joint military exercises between Ukraine and NATO countries. In 2002, 77 people died and 165 were injured after Su-27 fell into the crowd at an airshow in Lviv in the western Ukraine.
