ISTANBUL

Russia said Tuesday that a plane reported missing after sending a distress signal over the country’s Far East region has been found, with all five people aboard alive.

“The plane has been found, everyone is alive,” Yevgeny Perfilyev, the ecology, nature management and forestry minister of Russia's Sakha Republic, said in a statement on Telegram.

Earlier, Russia’s state news agency TASS reported that an Antonov An-2 plane activated its emergency locator beacon while “flying in the interests of forest protection” in the Tomponsky district.

The Tomponsky district, in the eastern Sakha Republic of Siberia, is a vast and sparsely populated area characterized by largely mountainous terrain and dense forests.

TASS said Russia's civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, had been undertaking search and rescue efforts to find the plane and the five people on board.