Two crew members died when a Su-25 fighter jet crashed in western Armenia on Tuesday, December 4, the ex-Soviet republic’s defense ministry said.
Debris of the jet “was found in the mountains near the town of Maralik” in Armenia’s western Shirak region, the ministry spokesman Atrsrun Hovhannisyan said in a Facebook post.
“Two pilots, lieutenant colonel Armen Babayan and major Movses Manukyan, were killed” in the crash, he said.
The aircraft disappeared from radars on Tuesday morning, minutes after it took off for a routine training flight, the ministry had reported earlier.
The jet took off from Gyumri airport on a planned training flight at 10:06 a.m. communication was lost around 10:20 a.m., aysor.am reported.
Under an agreement signed in 2010, Gyumri hosts a Russian military base which will operate until 2044, Interfax reported.
Designed to provide close air support, the Sukhoi Su-25 is a single-seat twin-engine ground attack aircraft that entered series production in 1978. The Su-25UBK is a two-seat trainer version of the aircraft.
With reporting from AFP