MOSCOW — Kazakhstan’s acting border service chief was among 27 people killed in a military plane crash Tuesday near a southern city, another blow to the agency after he was appointed in June to deal with the aftermath of a mass killing involving a conscript.

The Russian-made An-72 crashed at 7:55 a.m. about 12 miles away from the city of Shymkent near the border with Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan’s Committee for National Security said in a statement.