MOSCOW: The Russian Ministry of Defense announced Wednesday that six crew members and 23 passengers on board an Antonov An-26 military transport aircraft were killed after it lost contact over the Crimean Peninsula.

The Ministry said, yesterday, that contact had been lost with the military aircraft, which was on a scheduled flight over Crimea.

Search and rescue team later located the crash site, confirming that six crew members and 23 passengers on board were killed, according to a ministry statement.

The preliminary cause of the crash is attributed to a technical malfunction.