Senior Russian commander killed in March air crash, official says

(Corrects April 6 story, ‌paragraph 2, ​to ​show Otroshchenko was commander of the Mixed Air Force Corps of the Northern Fleet, not commander of ‌the 45th Army of the Northern Fleet's Air Force ⁠and Air Defence)

MOSCOW, April 6 (Reuters) - A senior Russian air force commander was ‌killed when a military ‌transport aircraft crashed nL1N40J1F3 in Russian-controlled Crimea last week killing 30 people, according to a senior official cited by Russian ​media on Monday.

Alexander Otroshchenko, commander of the Mixed Air Force Corps of the Northern Fleet, died in the crash, ⁠Andrei Chibis, governor of the northern Murmansk region where the fleet is based, ​was quoted as saying.

The An-26 military transport plane crashed into a cliff in Crimea on March 31. ​Russia's Defence Ministry said shortly afterwards ‌that the preliminary cause was technical malfunction.

The An-26 has been in service since the late 1960s ⁠and has also been used by airlines to carry freight, but the model has been involved in a number of deadly crashes ⁠over the last decade.

A Ukrainian An-26 crashed during a flight in Ukraine's ​southeastern Zaporizhzhia region in 2022, killing one person. Another aircraft crashed on a training flight in northeastern Ukraine in 2020, killing all but one ‌of the 27 people on board.

Eight people, including five Russians, were killed when an An-26 ‌crashed in South Sudan in 2020. Four of 10 people on ⁠board were killed when ‌an An-26 crashed on ​landing in Ivory Coast in West Africa in 2017.

(Reporting by Reuters, Writing by Felix Light,Editing by Andrew ‌Cawthorne)

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