A Chinese air force jet crashed into houses during a training mission in central China, killing one person on the ground and injuring two others, state media said.
The report was unusual because China generally keeps military accidents under wraps or emphasizes the heroic role of the pilot in avoiding casualties on the ground.
Foreign governments have over the past few months complained of reckless flying by Chinese fighter jets they said endangered crews on their own military surveillance planes.
The People’s Daily on Thursday reported that the J-7 aircraft went down near an airport in Hubei Province.
The pilot ejected safely, but “some residential buildings were damaged,” the report said.
It did not say when the crash occurred.
The pilot and those injured were taken to hospital, it said, adding that the cause of the crash is under investigation.
The J-7 is an older, single-engine aircraft with its origins in the Soviet MiG-21 dating from the 1950s. It was produced for almost 50 years until production ended in 2013.
Large numbers remain in service to provide regional air protection.
China also sold an export version, the F-7, to more than a dozen countries, many of which have since retired the planes.
China’s civil aviation industry has in past few months come under scrutiny following the still-unexplained crash of a China Eastern Airlines passenger jet on March 21 in which all 132 people on board were killed.
Moreover, a Tibet Airlines flight with 122 people on board was on May 12 departing from the southwestern city of Chongqing when it veered off the runway and caught fire. No one was killed, but several people sustained minor injuries.
Australia and Canada have raised concerns about reckless flying by Chinese fighter pilots.
In a statement on Wednesday last week, the Canadian military said that Chinese planes tried to divert a Canadian long-range patrol aircraft from its path and that the crew had to change direction quickly to avoid a collision.
Australia said a Chinese fighter jet on May 26 committed a dangerous act of aggression against an Australian military plane conducting aerial surveillance in international airspace over the South China Sea.
The Chinese J-16 accelerated and cut in front of the Australian plane, releasing chaff with small bits of aluminum designed to confuse radars that was sucked into the latter’s engine, Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles said.
China has defended the actions of its pilots and blamed foreign countries for conducting close-in surveillance of its territory to contain Chinese development.
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the
RSS