A military aircraft carrying members of the Kazakh border guard service crashed Tuesday in the Shymkent region in the south of the country with fatalities feared, media reports said.

The Interfax news agency quoted the KNB security service as saying that 27 people were on board the plane, including the acting head of the border guards service. A source told Interfax separately that all those on board were killed but this was not confirmed in the KNB statement.