Russia's Tu-95 bomber crashes, killing 2 pilots

The Russian Defense Ministry announced Tuesday that two pilots were killed after a Tu-95 strategic bomber crashed due to the failure of all four engines in the Far Eastern region of Khabarovsk.

According to an official statement released by the ministry, both pilots managed to bail out of the aircraft but did not survive the landing.

The other five crew members survived and were sent to a military hospital for health checkup and no one's life is in danger, Tass news agency quoted the ministry as saying.

"The cause of the crash of the Tu-95 plane during the training flight was failure of all four engines," the ministry said.

All flights of Tu-95 aircraft were temporarily suspended after the incident.

The crash occurred in an unpopulated area 80 kilometers from the regional capital city of Khabarovsk at 9:50 a.m. Moscow time ( 0650 GMT) earlier in the day.

The aircraft, which was conducting a routine training mission, wasn't carrying ammunition.

This is the second accident involving a Tu-95 within roughly a month. On June 8, several crew members were injured as a Tu-95 ran off the runway when taking off during a training mission in the Far Eastern Amur region.

Since June, at least three Russian warplanes have crashed, including two MiG-29 and one Su-24 jet fighters.

The four-engine Tu-95 entered service in the 1950s and is the longest-serving Tupolev strategic bomber and missile carrier designed by the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.