JALANDHAR, India, May 3: An Indian Air Force MiG-21 fighter jet caught fire in midair and crashed into a bustling commercial zone in the northern city of Jalandhar on Friday, killing at least eight people, officials here said.

Fifteen others, mostly employees of a state-own bank, were seriously injured when flaming debris from the Russian-built aircraft fell on the building in the heart of this frontier city bordering Pakistan, they said.

The crash, the second of an Indian military jet in the region since February, unnerved the Indian air force which immediately banned training flights on a special fleet of single-seater MiG jets which have been recently upgraded by their Russian manufacturers.

“This is a temporary ban and applies only to training and not on operational sorties,” a defence ministry spokesman told AFP in New Delhi.

The aircraft took off from an air base in the garrison town of Adampur at 9:40 am (0410 GMT) on a training flight and 25 minutes later caught fire midair and exploded over Jalandhar’s busiest district, city police chief Paramjit Singh Gill told AFP.

The MiG’s wings disintegrated in the air and its blazing fuselage rocketed into the state-owned Bank of Rajasthan building five minutes after it had opened for business at 10:00am (0430 GMT), the Jalandhar police chief said.

Eight people, including four bank employees, were killed instantly and 15 others including 10 more bank workers were injured, mostly suffering serious burns after being doused in flaming aviation fuel.—AFP