Mark Cancian

An investigation is underway into The Crash of a fighter jet into a block of flats in Yeysk, Russia on Monday, killing 13 people including three children.

Dramatic videos and images have surfaced across Social Media , allowing us to try to piece together What Happened .

On Monday evening, an Su-34 fighter-bomber crashed into a residential building in The Russian city of Yeysk, More Than 100 miles (160km) from Ukrainian held territory.

The Russian defence ministry has suggested that a malfunction in one of the engines was the The Most likely cause.

Videos on Social Media showed a large fire and smoke billowing out of a high-rise block.

Several of these have been verified by The Bbc to confirm the north side of a nine-storey block just off a main road in Yeysk had been hit.

In The Videos , the same landmarks and buildings can be seen. We cross referenced these with Google street view images to confirm The Crash happened just off the Ulitsa Kommunisticheskaya dual carriageway in The South of Yeysk.

The Weather also matched in each video, with Clear Skies and The Sun setting, so we can be confident that The Crash happened about 17:30 local time.

The Russian Defence Ministry has said the Su-34 crashed after Taking Off for a training flight from a military airfield near Yeysk.

The Su-34 is a fighter bomber operated by two pilots which is often deployed to hit ground targets.

" Su-34s are one of Russia's more advanced aircraft but it still has problems that have manifested, particularly in training, " says J Andrés Gannon, a security expert at the US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

There have been two other cases of Su-34s crashing this year that were unrelated to enemy fire, according to Air Forces Monthly, a UK publication that tracks Military Aircraft data.

CCTV footage from a major road near to The Block was later posted on Telegram and Twitter.

It showed an aircraft descending, a flash which could have been some sort of initial explosion or fire on board, And Then a much larger explosion as the plane hit The Building .

The plane appears to be flying in from The West , possibly from the Yeysk airport on The Outskirts of The City which has a military airfield.

In video of The Fire after impact, crackling sounds and some small bangs can be heard.

These could have been caused by ammunition which was being carried by the plane during training exercising igniting.

Russian officials say The Fire was caused by a fuel spill and insist that there were no explosions of ammunition.

" If there was something like that, then exactly half of The House would have been destroyed, " said The Local governor.

This still also appeared on Telegram:

It shows a pilot with a parachute in The Top right, who appears to have ejected from the plane before it crashed.

We Are carrying out further investigations to confirm the authenticity of this image.

The parachute seen in the still has orange circles around it, identifiable as markings on Russian military kit, and matching an example of a Russian pilot seen ejecting over Syria in 2018.

A video posted on Telegram near the Crash Site shows a pilot lying on the floor with a parachute to The West of the damaged building.

The Pilot is alive, lying on his back, and responding to questions.

A person asks The Pilot in Russian " Is all normal? " to which he responds " Yes, yes. " When asked whether his plane was shot down, The Pilot says " No. "

We don't know What Happened to The Second pilot, but Russia says both of the pilots ejected before impact and are being questioned.

We showed the video evidence from Social Media to several security and airpower experts to get their assessment of what might have happened.

Andres Gannon, from the CFR said the visual evidence indicated an engine malfunction was the main cause of The Crash . This may have caused the fuel supply to ignite, consistent with two flashes of light clearly seen in videos.

" The First is likely when the fuel supply was ignited from the engine failure, And Then The Second flash makes sense As Far as when the hatches where the pilots were sitting ignite for ejection.

" We don't see something that seems like a missile strike. We don't see any heat or light from any source that's coming towards it. "

" It's hard To Believe it's a missile strike, " says Mark Cancian , a defence adviser at The International Security Program.

He says Russia has a " very high" accident rate in its military, so a plane malfunction is more likely.

But not all The Experts we spoke to agree with this assessment.

Paul Beaver , a pilot and aviation historian, says the flashes in the video are more consistent with the plane being hit, rather than suffering a malfunction.

" There's a flash you can just about see towards the tail end of the aircraft. Central malfunctions don't look like that, they happen further up the plane… It looks to me like a plane struck by a missile. "

Mr Beaver says it's more likely to be from a Russian missile striking the plane In Error , rather than it being hit by a Ukrainian missile, with the Crash Site More Than 100 miles from the Front Line .

Source of news: bbc.com