Plane with at least 30 people on board goes missing in Russia

Moscow: A Russian airplane carrying 28 onboard has gone missing in the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia’s far east region, multiple news reports said citing regional authorities on Tuesday. The AN-26 plane lost contact with air traffic control while attempting to land, TASS separately cited a source as saying.

The An-26 was flying from Kamchatka’s main city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to the town of Palana when it disappeared and failed to land as scheduled, Valentina Glazova, a spokeswoman for the local transport prosecutor’s office, told AFP.

She said 29 people were on board, including 23 passengers and six crew.

“Search and rescue efforts are underway,” she said. “All that is known at this time, what has been possible to establish, is that communication with the plane was interrupted and it did not land.”

She said the plane had been operated by a local aviation company in Kamchatka, a vast peninsula in Russia’s extreme Far East on the Pacific Ocean.