Baltic Sea
Four killed as private jet crashes over Baltic Sea
Stockholm: All four onboard were believed to be killed when a private jet crashed into the Baltic Sea, according to media reports from both Sweden and Latvia.
"There is no hope we will find survivors," Swedish Television quoted a spokesperson at the Swedish Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre as saying on Sunday.
Wreckage and an oil spill were spotted in the sea between Sweden and Latvia.
Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks said that a Latvian rescue boat has been sent to the scene of the plane crash and that Swedish and Lithuanian rescuers were also on their way to this area. It is not yet clear in which country's territorial waters the plane crashed.
According to FlightRadar data, the aircraft in question is an Austrian-registered Cessna 551 which was flying from Jerez in southern Spain, from where it took off without a set destination. It turned twice, at Paris and Cologne, before heading straight out over the Baltic, passing near the Swedish island of Gotland.
The aircraft crashed at 1745 GMT on Sunday and disappeared from radar northwest of the Latvian city of Ventspils.
Swedish authorities reported that German and Danish warplanes scrambled to check on the Cessna but were unable to make contact. The pilots inside the fighter jets could not see anyone inside Cessna's cockpit.
The rescue operation is currently underway to find the victims of the accident, the Latvian Civil Aviation Agency (CAA) said.
(With UNI inputs)
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