MOSCOW, March 12. /TASS/. Five pilots from the Orenburg Region were killed in the crash of an Ilyushin IL-76 plane near Ivanovo, Orenburg Mayor Sergey Salmin wrote on his Telegram channel.

"Today an Il-76 military transport plane crashed during an attempt to land at the Severny airfield in the [central Russian] region of Ivanovo. The crew steered the engulfed plane away from the residential buildings in the village of Podtalitsy. There were no survivors on board the plane," the mayor wrote.

Sixteen people were onboard, he added. "Five of them were pilots of the Orenburg 117th Military Transport Aviation Regiment," Salmin specified. The Orenburg mayor expressed condolences to the next-of-kin of the dead. "They will remain forever in our memory, in our hearts. Orenburg mourns together with you," the mayor added.

The plane crashed at about 1 p.m. Moscow time (10 a.m. GMT). It went down in the forest outside the village of Bogorodskoye. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the Il-76's engine caught fire during takeoff for a routine flight. There were eight crew members and seven passengers on board.