A Russian military cargo plane crashed in the city of Ryazan southeast of Moscow, killing four crew members and injuring five others.
The incident happened during a training flight on Friday, the defence ministry said in a statement quoted by local news agencies.
The plane was on a training flight without cargo when the crew decided to land because of an engine malfunction but it was partially destroyed when it hit the ground.
“According to preliminary information, four people died as a result of a plane crash in the area of the Mikhailovsky highway in the city of Ryazan,” the regional government’s crisis unit said in a statement, as quoted by the TASS state news agency.
The defence ministry also said that the injured crew members were taken to hospital.
The plane was an Il-76 military transport aircraft, which was first manufactured in the Soviet Union in the late 1960s.
The aircraft crashed into a field close to residential buildings near a highway, causing a fire that has since been extinguished.
No details were given about where the aircraft was headed when it crashed in Ryazan, around 200 kilometres southeast of the Russian capital.
Meanwhile, several military planes have crashed this month near Russia’s border with Ukraine, where Moscow has been engaged in ferocious fighting since invading in late February.
