MOSCOW, August 12. /TASS/. Russia’s Defense Ministry has sent a helicopter with three submersibles to the crash site of a Mi-8 helicopter that plunged into a deep lake on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East, the ministry’s press office announced on Thursday.

A Mi-8 helicopter of the Vityaz-Aero Airline carrying three crewmembers and 13 passengers crashed into a lake in the Kronotsky Nature Reserve in Kamchatka. Eight people survived while the rest, including a child, are believed to be dead. Medical workers and rescuers are working at the scene. Investigators have opened a criminal case into the crash.

"A Mi-8 helicopter of the Russian Defense Ministry with three remote-controlled submersible vehicles has been dispatched to the Mi-8 crash site in the area of Kurile Lake in Kamchatka to carry out search efforts," the statement says.

This is not the first incident involving helicopters of the Vityaz-Aero Airline. On April 19, 2017 a Mi-8 helicopter belonging to the company crash-landed on a slope of the Mutnovsky volcano, injuring three people.