All 11 members of the crew of a Russian cargo plane were killed today when their Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft crashed shortly after take off from the Mirny airport in the country's diamond mining region of Yakutia.

According to the spokesperson of local disaster mitigation agency Nadezhda Dovretskaya, the plane fell two kilometres from the airport.

"The plane belonged to the Interior Ministry and was not carrying any cargo or passengers. The charred bodies of crew members and flight recorders have been recovered. There were no destructions and casualties on the ground," Dovretskaya told Vesti FM radio.

Last month, another Il-76 cargo plane of the Russian military had to abort take off after one of its engines disintegrated and fell down on the runway at a base in Ivanovo region near here.

Il-76 is the mainstay of Russian and Indian air forces' transport wings and the two countries are in the process of setting up a joint venture for the designing, development and production of a multirole transport aircraft (MTA) to replace their ageing Il-76 and other Soviet era aircraft.