Belgrade  - A Serbian fighter aircraft crashed Wednesday north of Belgrade, local media reported.

Witnesses said they saw the pilot eject and parachute down, but the search for him was still ongoing, television B92 said. The plane crashed some 40 kilometres north of Belgrade.

The Fonet news agency said the plane was a Yugoslav-era J-22 Orao, more than three decades old but still in use.

The Orao was constructed in cooperation between Yugoslavia and Romania in the later half of the 1970s and in the 1980s. (dpa)