(Kavala) Eight Ukrainian crew members perished in the crash of an Antonov cargo plane on Saturday evening in northern Greece, carrying military equipment bound for Bangladesh.
Posted at 10:42
Departing from Serbia, the Antonov 12, owned by a Ukrainian company Meridian LTD, was carrying around 11 tonnes of armaments, Serbian Defense Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic said on Sunday.
No survivors were identified and, according to press reports, six bodies had been located on Sunday.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has confirmed the identity of the eight victims, all Ukrainians. “The preliminary cause of the accident is the failure of one of the engines,” its spokesman, Oleg Nikolenko, said on Facebook.
Denys Bohdanovytch, general manager of the Meridian company, also told German television channel Deutsche Welle that all the crew members were Ukrainians.
The Serbian Minister of Defense also assured that the delivery of weapons had been agreed with the Bangladeshi Ministry of Defense “in accordance with international rules”.
“Unfortunately, some media have speculated that the plane was carrying weapons for Ukraine, but that is totally false,” he added at a press conference.
Dhaka confirmed to be the recipient of this shipment, “training mortar rounds purchased in Serbia for the army and border guards of Bangladesh”, according to the army’s public relations office. “There were no weapons in the shipment and it was covered by insurance,” he said, however.
Fireball
The accident happened around 11 p.m. near the village of Paleochori, about 23 kilometers from Kavala.
Videos shared by witnesses on social media showed images of the plane caught in a ball of fire before touching down. An AFP photographer saw debris from the Antonov scattered over a wide area from the air.
Residents have been banned from going to fields near the scene of the tragedy until authorities can evacuate the wreckage and unexploded ordnance.
“We heard a deafening noise (and saw) a fireball approaching the ground. Then there was the explosion,” Sofia, a mother of three living in a nearby village, told Athens News Agency (ANA).
Another local resident, Giorgos Archontopoulos, told state broadcaster ERT he sensed something was wrong when he heard the plane’s engine.
“At 10:45 a.m. (1945 GMT), I was startled by the sound of the plane’s engine,” he said. “I got out and saw the engine on fire.”
The aircraft took off from Nis airport (southern Serbia) on Saturday around 8:40 p.m. local time (6:40 p.m. GMT), carrying weapons whose exporter is the private Serbian company Valir, according to Nebojsa Stefanovic.
Greek media reported that he requested permission to make an emergency landing at Kavala airport in northern Greece but failed to obtain it.
Fire chief Marios Apostolidis told reporters that “firefighters equipped with special equipment and measuring instruments approached the plane’s point of impact and closely examined the fuselage and other parts scattered in the fields”.
Biological and chemical weapons experts from the Greek army also combed through the crash site on Sunday and gave the “green light” to rescue teams to intervene, the ERT channel reported.
Thirteen men from the special fire brigades and 26 firefighters were near the crash site.
Two firefighters were taken to hospital for breathing difficulties due to toxic fumes.
The ANA said an investigation would be opened to determine the causes of the accident.