Moscow:

Three people were killed after a plane crashed in the Moscow Region, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said in a statement.

According to preliminary information, the plane, a Russian-designed Superjet 100, fell in a forest area in the Kolomensky district of the Moscow Region, Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.

The crash took place during a test flight after a scheduled repair, the TASS news agency reported.

No casualties have been reported among the local population.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A Russian military transport plane with 15 people on board crashed on March 12 while taking off from an air base in western Russia, the Defence Ministry said.

The Ministry said the Il-76 aircraft with eight crew and seven passengers on board crashed in the Ivanovo region. It didn’t say whether there were any survivors.

The Ministry’s statement said that an engine fire during takeoff was the likely cause of the crash.

The four-engine Il-76 is a heavy-lift transport plane that has been in service since the 1970s with the Soviet and then Russian air force.

The crash on March 12 came on a day when the Defence Ministry reported dozens of attacks on Russia by Ukrainian drones. In the past, Ukrainian drones hit some military air bases deep inside Russia.

Military experts have noted that as the number of Russian military flights increased sharply during the fighting in Ukraine, so did the crashes.