SM Mizanur Rahman with Mohammad Junaid :An Ukrainian chartered cargo aircraft carrying shrimp fry crashed into the Bay of Bengal, killing its pilot and two crew and injuring another at Sonadia channel’s Nazirtek, some half kilometre from the Cox’s Bazar district headquarters on Wednesday morning. The ill-fated Ukrainian victims were pilot Murad Gafarov, co-pilot Ivan Patrov and flight engineer Kulish Andriy. The injured navigator Vlodymyr Kutanov is now undergoing treatment at Cox’s Bazar Sadar Hospital. They all are employees of Ukrainian’s True Aviation Limited, its local Station Manager SM Hasanat said.Talking to The New Nation on Wednesday afternoon, Cox’s Bazar Airport Manager Sadhan Kumar Mohanta said that the Russian-owned True Aviation Limited’s aircraft with four crew crashed into the sea soon after taking off from the airport around 9am. “The pilot and two crew were killed and another received serious injuries,” he said adding fishermen rescued the two crew of the aircraft and admitted them to Cox’s Bazar Sadar Hospital where the on-duty doctors declared the flight engineer dead.The injured Wazi Morout was later shifted to Chittagong Medical College Hospital for better treatment as his condition worsened, an on-duty doctor said.Thy pilot Murad Gafarov and copilot Ivan Patrov had remained missing till 3pm. Later the members of Bangladesh Coast Guard, Fire Service and fishermen launched a rescue operation and recovered their bodies from the seawater.According to him, the chartered cargo aircraft of Ukraine, carrying shrimp fry was heading to Jessore airport when it crashed after take-off from the Cox’s Bazar airport “The cargo aircraft used to transport shrimp fry from Cox’s Bazar to Jessore,” he said. Mohammad Aslam Hossain, Officer-in-Charge of Cox’s Bazar Sadar police Station said that True Aviation Limited of Bangladesh hired two cargo aircraft from Ukraine for carrying shrimp. “Of them aircraft AN-26 was crashed into the sea on Wednesday morning,” he said. The local fishermen said the aircraft straight dived into the sea when they were at beach and rushed to the spot with their trawlers and rescued them.
