Russian military plane crashes into cliff - 29 dead in country's barren Far East
A RUSSIAN PLANE with 28 people on board has crashed in the remote Kamchatka peninsula in the nation's far east, with nobody on board believed to have survived.
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The twin-engined Antanov An-2 plane, which was travelling from regional capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to the village of Palana in the northern part of the peninsula, lost contact with air traffic control during the flight, Russia's emergencies ministry said. Regional rescue workers were sent from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and the Ossora settlement to undertake out a search operation.
The search also involved rescue workers dispatched by the regional branch of the Emergencies Ministry, with several ships also en route.
There were 22 passengers, including one child, and village mayor Olga Mokhireva, as well as six crew members on board, the ministry said. All are feared to have perished.
Citing sources, Interfax reported that the plane was believed to have crashed into a cliff as it was preparing to land in poor visibility conditions.
Russia's civil aviation authority confirmed that the plane's crash site had been found after the emergencies ministry dispatched a helicopter and had deployed teams on the ground to look for the missing aircraft.
An insider told the news agency: "According to preliminary information, the An-26 plane crashed into the sea."
The weather in the area was cloudy at the time the plane went missing, Russian news agencies reported.
TASS said the aircraft involved had been in service since 1982.
Russian aviation safety standards have improved in recent years but accidents, especially involving ageing planes in far-flung regions, are not uncommon.
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The Soviet-era plane type, still used for military and civilian flights in some countries, has been involved in dozens of deadly crashes since it entered service around 50 years ago.
An Antonov-28, a similar plane, slammed into a Kamchatka forest in 2012 in a crash that killed 10 people along the same route. Investigators said both pilots were drunk at the time of the crash.
The Kamchatka Peninsula is a vast, sparsely populated region in Russia's far east.
It is surrounded by the Sea of Okhotsk to the west and the Pacific Ocean to the east.
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More than half its 320,000 inhabitants live either in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, or the nearby town of Yelizovo.
The peninsula contains a large group of active volcanoes which together are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
After World War 2, the Soviet Union declared Kamchatka a military zone.
The region was closed to citizens until 1989, and to foreigners until 1990.