An II-18 military plane crash landed in northeastern Siberia with 32 passengers and seven crew members on board, a law enforcement source confirmed.

The plane was carrying 39 people from the Kansk air base in the Krasnoyarsk Krai region on Monday when it went down at 4:45 a.m. local time in an unpopulated area of Bulunsky district of Yakutia, north-west of Tiksi in the Sakha region.

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The ministry said a special commission had been flown to the crash site to investigate the accident.

Poor weather conditions were seen as the cause of the crash as the plane may have been forced to make an emergency landing due to high winds, the deputy head of regional government, Alexei Kolodeznikov, said according to the Interfax news agency. Pilot error was not ruled out.

Earlier reports said many were killed, but the defense ministry said all the seven crew members and 32 officers on board survived.

Nearly 100 service men and two helicopters from the Tiksi base were sent to the scene to rescue the wounded, with people airlifted to nearby hospitals, Sputnik news reported.

"Three soldiers are in grave condition, 13 others have sustained medium severity injuries, all the rest are undergoing a medical examination," the source said. Sputnik reported that the injured would be taken for treatment to Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The rescue operation had been exacerbated by blizzard conditions with winds of 15-20 meters/second, Sakha officials said. Meanwhile, special hydraulic shears had been used to move apart the wreckage in search for survivors. The impact also broke the fuselage into three pieces as it made an emergency landing, although no fire broke out.

The Defense Ministry-owned II-18 propeller craft dates back from the Soviet era in the 1960s that is still used in military operations.

TagsRussia, Military, plane crash, Siberia