KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - The wreckage of a Malaysian fighter jet which crashed a day ago was found on Friday (June 16), the air force said.

The Hawk 108 fighter jet took off at 11am Thursday and contact was lost 30 minutes later when the plane was believed to be near the border of the Malaysian states of Pahang and Terengganu.

In a statement the air force said that the wreckage was found in a Terengganu forest.

The jet's two pilots were found dead on Thursday in a swampy area in in Chukai, a town in Terengganu.

"We will conduct a thorough investigation of this crash to see it from all angles," Malaysia's defence minister Hishammuddin Hussein was quoted as saying by state news agency Bernama.

There have been other recent cases of military plane incidents in Malaysia.

In December, a military Beechcraft B200T turboprop crashed in the town of Butterworth in northern Malaysia.

In May last year, an air force Aermacchi MB339CM jet crashed in a small town in the rural state of Pahang but there were no casualties.