YEREVAN. – Bodies of the five Armenian crewmembers of the cargo plane, which crashed on November 4 in South Sudan, on Friday were handed over to their relatives in Armenia.

Some of these fallen crewmembers will be laid to rest on Saturday.

Their bodies were transferred to Armenia late Thursday evening, via Juba-Khartoum-Yerevan charter flight.

The crewmembers of the crashed aircraft included a Russian citizen, whose body was taken from Yerevan to Moscow with the same flight.

A Soviet-era Antonov (AN)-12 transport plane, which belonged to Allied Services Limited, had crashed on November 4 in South Sudan immediately after takeoff, as it damaged buildings and fell into the White Nile.

There were eighteen people aboard the cargo plane, including five Armenian citizen crewmembers: First pilot and aircraft commander Gevorg Tovmasyan, second pilot Samvel Hambardzumyan, engineer Samvel Mkrtchyan, and technicians Armen Antonyan, and Suren Petrosyan. All of them were killed in the crash. The death toll in this tragic accident is forty.