KAVALA, Greece —
All eight crew members were killed when a Ukrainian-operated cargo plane
crashed in
Greece en route from Serbia to Bangladesh carrying military goods,
the Serbian defense minister said Sunday.
اضافة اعلان
Witnesses said they saw the privately operated
Antonov on fire and heard explosions. Videos shared on social media showed the
plane engulfed by a giant fireball as it hit the ground late Saturday.
“Sadly, according to the information we have
received, the eight members of the crew died in the crash,” Serbian Defense
Minister
Nebojsa Stefanovic told a news conference.
The Antonov An-12 took off from Nis airport in
southern Serbia at around 8:40pm (1840 GMT) on Saturday, carrying “around 11
tonnes of military industry goods” namely mines from Valir, a private Serbian
company, to the Bangladeshi defense ministry, Stefanovic said.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said the eight crew were
Ukrainian citizens. “The preliminary cause of the accident is the failure of
one of the engines,” said spokesman
Oleg Nikolenko on Facebook.
Denys
Bogdanovych, general director of Meridian, the
Ukrainian airline operating the
plane, also told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle that the crew were all
Ukrainian.
Debris was scattered across a wide area and the
crash site surrounded by fields was visible from the air, an AFP photographer
said.
“We heard a deafening noise (and saw) a fireball
approaching the ground. Then came the explosion,” Sofia, a mother of three from
the nearby village of Antifilipi told Athens News Agency (ANA).
The Greek fire brigade said the plane crashed at
around 11pm near Paleochori village around 23km northwest of the city of Kavala
in northern Greece.
Toxic fumes
Greek air control said the
plane requested clearance to make an emergency landing at the airport in Kavala
but did not make it.
The
Bangladesh military confirmed that they had been
the intended recipients of the cargo.
The aircraft had been carrying “training mortar
shells procured from Serbia for the Bangladesh Army” and border guard before it
crashed in Greece, said the military’s public relations office.
“There was no weapon in the shipment and the
shipment was covered by insurance,” it added.
Greek rescue services deployed a drone to monitor
the wreckage.
Biological and chemical weapons experts from the army
were expected to comb the crash site during the day, the civil protection
ministry said.
Villagers were forbidden from going into nearby
fields until authorities could remove the wreckage and unexploded ammunition.
People living within a 2km radius of the crash site
were asked to stay inside and wear face masks late Saturday.
Two firemen were taken to hospital early on Sunday
with breathing difficulties because of toxic fumes.
‘Engine on fire’
Fire brigade official Marios
Apostolidis told reporters staff with “special equipment and measuring
instruments” had inspected the point of impact and fuselage.
ANA said an investigation would be launched into the
cause of the accident.
Resident Giorgos Archontopoulos told Greek state
broadcaster ERT he sensed something was wrong as soon as he heard the aircraft
overhead.
“I went outside and saw the engine on fire,” he
said.
“If it had crashed some seconds earlier, it would
have hit our house,” 80-year-old Michalis Emmanouilidis, visibly shaken, told
ANA.
Ukraine’s consul in Thessaloniki, Vadim Sabluk,
visited the area on Sunday and the Greek foreign ministry expressed its
“sincere condolences” to the victims’ families.
ANA said Sabluk confirmed the identities of the crew
and the plane’s destination.
Serbia’s defense minister said the weapons shipment
was not linked to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“Unfortunately, some media have speculated that the
plane was carrying weapons destined for Ukraine but that is completely untrue,”
he said.
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