An Azerbaijani cargo plane crashed yesterday in a forest shortly after takeoff in China's northwest, killing its seven-member crew and igniting an inferno that destroyed the aircraft, the government said.
The Ilyushin 76 jet went down about 10km from the Urumqi airport in the Xinjiang region, the Xinhua News Agency said. It said the plane took off at 10:48am and crashed two to three minutes later.
"Rescuers have found seven charred bodies of the crew of the Azerbaijani cargo plane," Xinhua said. "The plane was completely burned by a fire after the crash. Only debris was left."
PHOTO: EPA
There were no deaths among people on the ground and the plane carried no passengers, Xinhua said. It said the cargo was "daily use goods," but didn't give any other details.
The plane was bound from the central Chinese city of Taiyuan to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, with a refueling stop in Urumqi, Xinhua said. That would mean the plane was loaded with thousands of liters of highly flammable aviation fuel on impact.
The cause of the crash was unclear, said a spokeswoman for the Urumqi airport who refused to give her name.
The craft was on a charter flight and belonged to an Azerbaijani company, said a spokeswoman for China's airline regulator, the Civil Aviation Administration of China. She would give only her surname, Zhong.
It crashed in a forest west of the runway, Zhong said. She said there were "no reports of ground casualties."
The Il-76 hit the ground nose-first, "causing explosions and sending off dense smoke," Xinhua said, citing witnesses. It said the blast hurled debris across a 2km2 area.
The craft hit cowsheds belonging to three farmers, Xinhua said, citing local police. It said the farmers' houses suffered "little damage," and didn't say whether anyone there was injured.
Police sealed off the area and were searching for the "black box" flight data and voice recorders, Xinhua said, citing local authorities.
Urumqi police and the city government, contacted by telephone, said they had no information about the crash.
The plane left Taiyuan at 5:50am and landed at Urumqi at 9:10am, Xinhua said.
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
Pulled from the mud as an infant after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and reunited with his parents following an emotional court battle, the boy once known as “Baby 81” is now a 20-year-old dreaming of higher education. Jayarasa Abilash’s story symbolized that of the families torn apart by one of the worst natural calamities in modern history, but it also offered hope. More than 35,000 people in Sri Lanka were killed, with others missing. The two-month-old was washed away by the tsunami in eastern Sri Lanka and found some distance from home by rescuers. At the hospital, he was
MILITANTS TARGETED: The US said its forces had killed an IS leader in Deir Ezzor, as it increased its activities in the region following al-Assad’s overthrow Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior US diplomat said on Friday following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism. Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by US diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war. The lightning offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 was led by the Muslim Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s
RSS