Three people on board a Cessna plane were killed earlier on Monday, when the aircraft caught fire upon landing 400 meters away from the airport of Ukhta, the Komi Republic’s emergencies department told TASS on Monday.

"Reports came at 2.10 pm that a Cessna-177 plane caught fire upon landing 400 meters away from the airport. There were three people on board, they were killed. At 2.20 pm, the fire on an area of six square meters was extinguished," the emergencies department said.

The crash of a single-engine plane that killed three people was reported earlier by an emergencies official.

The plane was involved in efforts to detect wildfires, the emergencies department said. According to the latest reports from Komi’s wildfire control center, 27 forest fires on an area of more than 6,000 hectares are currently active in the northwest Russian republic, with 366 forest fires reported since the start of this season.