国际英语新闻:U.S. military plane crashes in Kyrgyzstan

MOSCOW, May 3 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. military plane crashed Friday in Kyrgyzstan, the country's emergency situations ministry said.

There was no immediate word on any casualties but the ministry said preliminary information indicated that there were five people aboard.

The ministry said the plane went down near the village of Chaldovar, about 160 kilometers west of the U.S. Transit Center adjacent to the Manas International Airport outside Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek.

The plane crashed shortly after it took off from the base, which is used for troops flying into and out of Afghanistan and for C-135 tanker planes to refuel warplanes in flight.

"Several minutes earlier, it disappeared from the radars. We are checking information about a possible crash," the ministry said.

Rescuers and firefighters were working on the scene, emergency authorities said.

Prime Minister Zhantoro Satybaldiyev ordered the formation of a commission to investigate the crash and instructed his transportation minister to coordinate the inquiry.

It was not immediately clear if the plane was a C-135 or another model.

The Itar-Tass news agency quoted witnesses as saying that the plane broke into three parts before it crashed to the ground and caught a fire.

The plane carried several dozen tons of fuel and was headed for Afghanistan when it went down, an emergency situations ministry spokesman said.