Bangladesh plane crash - 1 killed, 2 missing

Dhaka, Mar 9: A privately-chartered Russian cargo plane crashed today into the Bay of Bengal killing a flight engineer, critically injuring its navigator while two others are missing.

The aircraft carrying shrimp fry from Cox Bazar to western Jessore district, crashed into the sea around half a kilometer off the shoreline soon after it took off at 9.40 AM, civil aviation officials said.

"Before the crash the pilot sent us a message saying one of the two engines of the plane went out of order... we prepared the airport for its emergency landing but the aircraft could not make its way back here," airport's manager Sadhan Kumar said.

Flight engineer of the aircraft Kulisn Andriy was declared dead by doctors while flight navigator Vlodymyr Kultanov was being treated at the Cox's Bazar sadar Hospital with critical wounds, an official of the Russian-owned True Aviation cargo service which hired the aircraft for transportation said.

He added that all the four onboard were Ukrainians while fishermen near the shoreline rescued the two of them. "But pilot Murad Gafarov and co-pilot Ivan Patrov are still missing ...we don't know if they are still inside the aircraft or could make their way out of it," official of the aviation service Hashmat Jahan said.

Navy and coastguard ships joined the fishing boats in carrying out a search campaign in the vicinity of the accident scene, just a kilometer off the shoreline.

PTI