An Indian Air Force (IAF) transport aircraft with eight crew-members and five passengers, which took off from Assam's Jorhat on Monday morning, has gone missing.

The Antonov An-32 took off at 12:25 pm for Mechuka in Arunachal Pradesh.

The aircraft established last communication with ground forces at 1 pm on Monday.

A search operation has been launched to find the missing IAF plane.

The An-32 is a Russian-designed twin-engine turboprop transport aircraft, which the Indian Air Force has been extensively using for over four decades.

Sources informed that there was a thunderstorm in Arunachal Pradesh earlier on Monday, which might be the reason behind this sudden disappearance of the aircraft.

Indian Army and the Air Force have intensified search operations at Gohpur, Dhemaji and areas in the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border.