Moscow, Oct 18 (AFP/APP): Russia said Tuesday that a technical malfunction had caused a military plane to crash a day earlier into a residential building near Ukraine, killing over a dozen people and spurring an outpouring among locals.
The crash late Monday ignited a towering blaze in the Soviet-style housing block, but by morning rescue workers were clearing the charred debris and grieving locals were leaving flowers at a memorial.
Authorities reported a 15th death on Tuesday due to the Sukhoi Su-34 aircraft’s slamming into the building in Yeysk, which sits across a narrow part of the Azov Sea from the Russian-held port of Mariupol in Ukraine.
A Yeysk resident told state television channel Rossiya-24 that two of her friends who had only recently bought a flat in the building were killed.
“They just took a mortgage. We are in mourning,” she said.
Nineteen people were injured, four of them — including a five-year-old girl and a teenage boy — were critically wounded, a regional official said.
Investigators announced they were questioning the pilots, who managed to parachute out of the plane before it crashed into the nine-storey building, engulfing it in flames.
Amateur footage on social media showed locals running to one of the pilots who lay on the ground, still attached to his parachute.
The southern seaside town was in shock.
One local, Natalia Kush, told state media she had seen the pilot ejecting from the jet from her window.
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