A Russian Antonov An-26 airplane with 28 people on board, including the head of a local government, went missing on Tuesday in the far east Kamchatka peninsula, the country’s emergencies ministry said.

The An-26 was flying from Kamchatka’s main city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to the town of Palana when it disappeared and failed to land as scheduled, Valentina Glazova, a spokeswoman for the local transport prosecutor’s office, said.

She said 28 people were on board, including 22 passengers and six crew.

“Search and rescue efforts are underway,” she said. “All that is known at this time, what has been possible to establish, is that communication with the plane was interrupted and it did not land.”

She said the plane had been operated by a local aviation company in Kamchatka, a vast peninsula in Russia’s extreme Far East on the Pacific Ocean.

Russian news agencies quoted local officials as saying there were 28 people on board, including six crew, and that there were one or two children among the passengers.

Source: Agencies