Tons of Gold-Silver Bars Fall from plane in Russia

The An-12 aircraft was carrying about 9 tons of gold and other precious metals on Thursday. Suddenly the plane spilled over 3 tons gold-silver bar onto the runway when it took off from Yakutsk, Russia, but later almost all the bars have been collected.
According to Russian media and airport officials, the value of “gold, platinum and diamonds” aboard the aircraft totaled $368 million. Report says, A total of 172 gold bars weighing 3.4 tons were later recovered from the area.
Images showed the bars strewn across the airport’s runway, and nearby residents scoured the surrounding area for bars. The plane’s crew decided to land at a nearby airport. There were no reported injuries.
The head of the airport, Nikolai Mesnikov, told “the cargo consisted of bars of dore an alloy of gold and silver that weighed about 44 pounds each”.
The airport said in a statement that a flap of the plane’s cargo hatch was torn off during takeoff and that the cause was under investigation.
Excited by the prospect of a gold rush, social media users were soon joking about braving sub-zero temperatures in search of an unclaimed gold bar. “Is there anyone from Yakutsk?
“I wish I were in Yakutsk,” one wistful social media user wrote, while another joked that Yakutia is such a rich region that “gold just pours from the sky” another joked.
“As it gathered height, the cargo door became damaged due to the shifting of cargo” and part of the cargo was scattered on the runway Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.
The plane was forced to land back at the airport, and police immediately sealed off the area to prevent people from rushing to the scene of the rare windfall.
A Russian spokesman for the company, Stanislav Borodyuk, told that “all the cargo has been picked up, there are no losses.” He said the bars were Dore, a semi-pure alloy of silver and gold.
>Juthy Saha