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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.
\n“They just took a mortgage. We are in mourning,” she said.<\/p>\n
Nineteen people were injured, four of them — including a five-year-old girl and a teenage boy — were critically wounded, a regional official said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Amateur footage on social media showed locals running to one of the pilots who lay on the ground, still attached to his parachute.
\nThe southern seaside town was in shock.<\/p>\n
One local, Natalia Kush, told state media she had seen the pilot ejecting from the jet from her window.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n
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