A cargo plane crashed off the coast of Bangladesh on Wednesday killing three Ukrainian crew members and critically injuring one more, officials said.

The plane went down in the Bay of Bengal minutes after taking off from the southeastern resort town of Cox's Bazar, killing three of the four crew on board.

A team of Bangladesh navy and coastguard ships and patrol aircraft recovered the bodies and took the injured man to hospital, local police chief Aslam Hossain told AFP.

"The injured Ukrainian crew has been sent to a top hospital in Chittagong city. He is now in intensive care," Hossain said, adding that the man was in critical condition.

The An-26 cargo aircraft was operated by private firm True Aviation and carrying live shrimp when it got into trouble shortly after take-off, the manager of Cox's Bazar airport, Sadhon Kumar Mohanta, told AFP.

"After it took off, the aircraft tried to return to the airport for an emergency landing but it did not land," Mohanta said.

"Moments later we lost contact with it and then we heard it crashed some 10 kilometres from Cox's Bazar town," he added.

The An-26 is a Ukrainian twin-engined turboprop aircraft that is used worldwide to transport both military and civilian cargo.

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