All nine crew members on board a cargo plane have been killed after it crashed near a Siberian city, a Russian official has said.
The Antonov-12 cargo plane went down near the city of Chelyabinsk, some 1,500km east of Moscow, Irina Andriyanova, a spokeswoman for the emergency situations ministry, said.
The plane took off from the Chelyabinsk airport and the crew reported a fire aboard minutes before the crash, Andriyanova said.
The four-engine turboprop was flying to the Ural Mountains city of Perm and was operated by the private Moskovia carrier, Russian news agencies reported.
Andriyanova said the plane crashed in a forested area around 30km from Chelyabinsk and that no casualties had been reported on the ground.
Vyacheslav Latunkin, a regional emergency official, said that the plane crashed after colliding with a power transmission line.
The Antanov-12 was designed in the 1950s and built in large numbers as both military and civilian transport.