Four people were killed when a small Russian passenger plane with 14 passengers and two crew on board made an emergency landing in a forest in southeastern Siberia on Sunday, the emergency ministry said.

The L-410 aircraft flying from the city of Irkutsk came down 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) from its destination, Kazachinkoye village, the Investigative Committee law enforcement agency said.

According to preliminary reports by local emergency services, there was an equipment failure, which the crew reported before making the hard landing, Interfax news agency reported.

Initial media reports said 11 people had been trapped inside the aircraft after it came down. Footage circulated on social media, purportedly of the landing scene, showed rescue workers with stretchers shining torches near a river at night.

(Reporting by Gleb Stolyarov, Tom Balmforth and Maxim Rodionov; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Pravin Char)