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Injured in Donetsk plane crash in stable condition

According to the medics, the rescued people got mostly not serious injuries, mainly bruises
Photo ITAR-TASS
Photo ITAR-TASS

MOSCOW, February 14 (Itar-Tass) – Doctors assess the condition of the people injured in a plane crash in Donetsk as stable.

According to the medics who overnight to Thursday were receiving the injured and giving them first aid, the rescued people got mostly not serious injuries, mainly bruises. Chief doctor of the Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedics Yuri Prudnikov said that only the condition of one of the pilots who got the spine injury causes concern. According to updated information, there were 50 people on board the Antonov An-24 plane, five of them were killed in the accident. Five people were hospitalised. Among the fatalities are an aide to the head of the Odessa Regional Council, Valery Bobkov, who along with his nine-year-old son was flying to Donetsk to a round of 16 match of the UEFA Champions League. The boy was not injured.

The child was retrieved from the wrecked aircraft by a student pilot who at the time of the accident was in the cockpit as a trainee. “I observed the work of the pilots,” he told reporters. “I think that the cause of the accident was poor visibility. Twice we hit the ground, and then everything began to spin, the aircraft ran to the right, the right engine caught fire. A breach formed in the cockpit through which the people were getting outside,” said the young pilot, who helped to rescue the child. “The guy kept asking where his dad is. And the saddest thing was that a few minutes before I saw his father dead. We passed the boy to his uncle,” said the trainee pilot.

A criminal case over violating flight safety rules that resulted in the death of people has been opened into the crash of the Antonov An-24 passenger aircraft at the Prokofyev international airport of Donetsk, the press service of Ukraine’s Donetsk Region Prosecutor’s Office reported. It was established that the An-24 on a flight from Odessa to Donetsk overshot the runway at Prokofyev airport at 6.24 p.m. on Wednesday. The aircraft turned over and the aircraft’s hull broke.

There is so far very little official information about the accident of the An-24 plane that crashed at Donetsk airport on Wednesday evening. The investigators and experts, as well as members of the government commission, headed by Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Vilkul have been working at the site.