Trio aboard missing plane found alive in Russia's Kamchatka after three days

MOSCOW (Reuters) - All three people on board a plane that was forced to make an emergency landing in Russia's remote Kamchatka region have been found alive and well after a three-day search, officials said on Sunday.

The operation ended when a rescue helicopter spotted the An-2 aircraft despite difficult weather conditions on Kamchatka, a peninsula that juts into the Pacific Ocean and is known for its wilderness and volcanoes.

The plane, carrying commercial goods, swiftly lost speed due to a build-up of ice and was forced to land on snow, a local official, Nikolai Sepko, wrote on Telegram.

"They had very little food, and in order to survive the night they dug a hole in the snow to keep warm," he said.

Andrei Mitasov, one of the rescued trio, told the RT television channel: "Inside (the aircraft) we kept warm, lit fuel, ate our food that we had. We switched on the emergency beacon, prayed and believed in a miracle."

(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

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