An Antonov cargo plane operated by a Ukrainian airline crashed on Saturday near the city of Kavala in the northern Greeceofficials said.
Local residents said they saw a fireball two hours after the accident and heard explosions.
Greek civil aviation officials said the A-12, a Soviet-built turboprop aircraft operated by the cargo carrier Meridian, was on its way from Serbia to Jordan.
According to Greek media reports, the street where eight people were on board contained 12 tonnes of ‘dangerous material’, mostly explosives. However, local officials confirmed the number of people on the ship and provided different numbers and said they had no specific information about the cargo.
A coordination committee made up of officials from the municipal corporation, police and fire service asked residents of the two areas closest to the accident site to keep their windows closed throughout the night, not to step out of their homes and wear masks as a precaution because of the strong odor . from the accident site.
Officials said they did not know whether the aircraft contained hazardous chemicals contained in the batteries.
The pilot managed to alert the authorities to a problem in one of the aircraft’s engines and was given the option of landing at either Thessaloniki or Kavala airports, and opted for Kavala, which was closer, it Saying it had to make an emergency landing, Greece’s civil aviation authority said.
The plane crashed about 40 kilometers west of the airport and communication with the plane was cut off almost immediately after.
More than an hour after the incident, the mayor of the municipality of Paggio, Filippos Anastasiadis, said he had heard explosions a few minutes earlier, confirming his location 300 meters from the crash site.
Locals saw a fireball and a plume of smoke before the accident.
A media report said the army and explosives experts were on their way to the site, which is located on farmland close to two villages that are part of the municipality of Pagayo. But they are not expected to start work before dawn. He will be joined by experts from the Atomic Energy Commission of Greece.
Fire service officials said the area has been cordoned off to a radius of about 400 meters and the cordoned area would be expanded in the morning.
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