The company that owns the plane confirmed the crash of its board in Greece.
Ukrainian “Meridian Airline”, which belonged military transport aircraft An-12, confirmed the crash of its ship in Greece. As reported by the general director of “Meridian” Denis Bogdanovych, all eight dead crew members were citizens of Ukraine, writes Deutsche Welle.
< p>The Meridian company attributes the cause of the disaster to a technical malfunction in the air.
At the same time, he refused to clarify information about the cargo of the plane, which was characterized as dangerous in Greece.
The spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Oleg Nikolenko, in turn, confirmed that the plane was carrying dangerous cargo.
“A Ukrainian transport plane AN-12, which was carrying dangerous cargo on the route Serbia-Jordan-Bangladesh, crashed at night in the north of Greece. The crew consisted of eight citizens of Ukraine. The preliminary cause of the accident is the failure of one of the engines,” he wrote.
An operational headquarters has now been set up at the base of the Ukrainian consulate in Thessaloniki, and Ukrainian consuls have already arrived at the scene of the disaster and are cooperating with rescuers and Greek law enforcement officers to find out all the circumstances of the incident.
The day before, a representative of the Civil Protection Service of Greece on air of the Greek Broadcasting Corporation ERT suggested that the plane could have carried 12 tons of toxic materials.
“We consider the cargo as dangerous,” said one of the members of the fire brigade working at the scene of the disaster.
Local residents were urged to close their windows and stay indoors. Eyewitnesses report a strong smell and difficulty breathing.
The television company, in turn, noted that experts on explosive substances are at the scene of the disaster.
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Recall that on the night of July 17, the An-12 military transport plane crashed in northeastern Greece, west of the Kavala airport in the Pangeon community. The ship was flying from Constantine the Great Airport near Nis in Serbia to Amman, the capital of Jordan.
The crew managed to warn about a problem with one of the engines before the crash, after which controllers in Greece allowed the plane to land at the airport of the city of Thessaloniki or at the airport of Kavala. The pilot chose the latter, but was unable to land. According to eyewitnesses, the plane caught fire while in the air, quickly descended, and then fell to the ground, after which there was an explosion.
A search and rescue operation is underway.
