The Kremlin’s military plane crashed into an apartment building high up in Russia, causing huge explosions.
The Su-34 bomber was on a training flight when it malfunctioned and ploughed into the block of flats in Yeysk, a resort city in the Krasnodar region near Crimea.
Soon after take-off, the engine caught fire. Both crewmembers were evacuated moments later as the aircraft plunged straight into a civilian structure.
Four floors of the building are still ablaze after tons of fuel exploded on impact, with flames spanning 2,000sq metres still ripping through the apartment block.
Surprising images and footage circulated on social media shows the fireball hitting the structure as an deployed parachute hovers nearby.
Although it was unclear at this time how many people died, early reports by Baza from Russia suggest that at least three were killed, and twelve people including a child were admitted to critical care.
Kondratyev (52) is the Krasnodar governor. He confirmed this via Telegram. There was no information available at this time about any casualties.
Anna Minkova, Deputy Governor of Russia, confirmed in the meantime that more beds are being made available to injured civilians. She added: “Specialists from regional clinic hospitals who have expertise in burns have been dispatched to Yeysk.
Unconfirmed photos circulating on social media show the dramatic fireball ripping through the building as a fully-deployed parachute floats to the ground nearby (circled)
The plane crashed into the Yeysk block of flats, which is a tourist city near Crimea on the Sea of Azov.
When the Su-34 bomber crashed into Yeysk’s block of flats, it was performing a training flight.
The Russian ministry of defence said: ‘On October 17, 2022, while climbing to perform a training flight from the military airfield of the Southern Military District, a Su-34 aircraft crashed. In Yeysk, the aircraft was found.
According to the reports of the ejected Pilots, one of the engine ignited during takeoff caused the aircraft crash.
“At the Su-34’s crash site in the courtyard of a residential area, the engine ignited.”
Chief war correspondent at the pro-Kremlin Komsomolskaya Pravda Aleksandr Kots identified the aircraft as an Su-34 of Russia’s 277th Bombing Aviation Regiment.
Kots stated that the most likely explanation was birds entering the engines during takeoff.
Ambulances and helicopters from the Fire Department rushed to the rescue of the residents of the apartment block on nine floors.
Regional Gov. Veniamin Kondratyev stated that all emergency services in the region were working together to extinguish the flames.
Local authorities stated that at least 15 apartments were damaged by the massive fire, which engulfed multiple floors in an apartment building.
Eyewitnesses reported that the fire spread to the first through fifth floors of the block’s nine-storey blocks of flats. One report said that the emergency services struggled to put out the flames in the block.
Ksenia Sobchak was a Russian former presidential candidate. She said, “It is scary to imagine how many deaths there will be.”
Shortly after takeoff, the engine caught on fire and both crewmembers were ejected just before the crash and safely landed.
Ambulances and helicopters of firefighters rushed to the rescue at the scene.
Only a few hundred kilometers from Yeysk was more terror for Ukrainian civilians today Today, Kyiv was attacked by kamikaze drones that were made by Iran. They were launched by Russia.
At least five explosions rocked the Ukrainian capital, starting around 3.30am local time as multiple waves of Shahed-136 drones – 28 in total – dodged air defences and slammed into the city, with police and armed forces resorting to firing machine guns into the air in an attempt to bring them down.
One drone was branded with the phrase “For Belgorod”, a Russian town that serves as a ground for attack on Ukraine. It was bombarded over the weekend.
Two conscripts also attacked a military barracks and killed at least 11 soldiers.
A strike that appeared to be targeting the city’s heating system hit an operations center. A second struck a residential four-story building and ripped a huge hole. At least three apartments were also thrown to the ground.
There were three deaths, 19 people were saved from the rubble and four others were wounded. Searchers for victims were unable to find their way through the rubble, which was filled with gray smoke.
Airstrikes then hit critical infrastructure in the Dnipro and Sumy regions – in the centre and north of Ukraine – killing ‘several’ people while leaving hundreds of villages without power, prime minister Denys Shmyhal said.
Late Sunday night, suicide drones struck Mykolaiv’s port city. They also set fire to sunflower oil storage tanks.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukrainian President, said that the drone strikes were intended to terrorize the civilian population. But he added: ‘The enemy could attack our cities, but it won’t be able break us.
It follows a massive barrage by Russian missiles as well as Iranian-made kamikaze bombers that targeted nearly every Ukrainian major city. After a devastating blast at the Crimean Bridge, civilians were killed and infrastructure was destroyed.