Two dead after MiG jet crashes in India

Two people on the ground died after a Russian-made MiG-21 military aircraft crashed onto a house in India on Monday, police said.

"Pilot has been rescued safely. The MiG crashed on a house. Two people have died. Three people have been injured," police officer Sudhir Chaudhary told the media after the crash in the western state of Rajasthan.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) confirmed the crash and that the pilot ejected.

"A MiG-21 aircraft of the IAF crashed near Suratgarh during a routine training sortie today morning," the IAF tweeted.

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"The pilot ejected safely, sustaining minor injuries. An inquiry has been constituted to ascertain the cause of the accident."

In July 2022, two pilots were killed when a MiG-21 crashed in a training sortie in Rajasthan.

That crash was the sixth MiG-21 aircraft to have gone down since January 2021, with five pilots killed.

Russian-made MiG-21 jets first entered Indian service in the 1960s and for decades served as the backbone of the country's air force.

Numerous crashes in the past few decades, however, have led to the planes being dubbed "flying coffins" because of their poor safety record.

Last week, an army helicopter with three people on board crashed in Jammu and Kashmir region.

Two Indian Air Force fighter jets crashed in January, killing one pilot and injuring two others, in an apparent mid-air collision while on exercises south of the capital New Delhi.

Agence France-Presse