2 Injured as Army's Trainer Jet Crashes in SW Pakistan
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - At least two pilots were injured on Saturday when a trainer jet of the Pakistan Army Aviation crashed in southwest of the country, local media reported.
According to the reports, the incident took place when a trainer plane MFI-17 Mushshak was on its routine mission and crashed in the Loralai, a district in the southwestern province of Balochistan.
Both trainer and trainee pilots aboard, captain Umar and captain Hasnain Mahmood, were severely injured in the crash.
Security personnel and rescue teams rushed to the site and shifted the injured to the army hospital in the area, where both of the wounded pilots were reportedly in critical condition.
The reports said the aircraft took off at 9:38 am (local time) from the Khalid Airbase, located near the provincial capital of Quetta, and encountered the crash almost one hour after its departure some 40 kilometers away from the airbase.
The reasons behind the incident are not known yet, Xinhua reported.
The MFI-17 Mushshak is a fixed-gear basic trainer aircraft and it has been manufactured by Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (PAC) since 1981. Other than Pakistan, the planes of this model have been in operations in Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Sierra Leone.
