An aging military cargo plane crashed south of Moscow, killing all 12 people aboard, officials said.
The federal Investigative Committee said Wednesday that the Antonov-22 plane was on a flight Tuesday from the Voronezh region when it crashed in the Tula region, about 190 kilometers south of Moscow.
The committee said that along with the crew piloting the A-22, the giant four-engine turboprop aircraft was carrying another crew to the Migalovo military air base in the Tver region.
The cause of the crash wasn’t immediately known.
Designed in the 1960s, the An-22 has a payload of 60 metric tons and is capable of airlifting about 300 troops. Only a handful of them are still in service with the country’s air force.
The plane that went down Tuesday was built in 1974.
The air force said Wednesday that it has grounded the remaining An-22s and its fleet of Tu-95 strategic bombers, which have the same type of engine, pending an investigation into the crash.
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