A Russian passenger plane carrying about 170 people has crashed in eastern Ukraine. Thirty bodies have been found at the crash site, about 45km (30 miles) north of Donetsk, a Russian official said.
The Tupolev-154 was flying from southern Russia to St Petersburg when it disappeared from radar screens following a distress signal.
Rescue workers at the scene had found the airliner’s blazing wreckage, Ukraine’s emergencies ministry said.
The crew sent a distress signal at 1537 Moscow time (1137 GMT), and the plane disappeared from radar screens at 1539 (1139 GMT), Irina Andrianova of Russia’s Emergencies Ministry told Itar-Tass news agency.
The plane belongs to St Petersburg-based Pulkovo airlines, she said.
The plane had 160 passengers and 10 crew on board, and was travelling from the Black Sea resort of Anapa, emergency officials said.
Reports of the cause of the crash were confused.
Ukraine emergencies ministry spokesman Igor Krol said the crew had decided to make an emergency landing after a fire broke out onboard the flight.
The plane’s landing gear failed to deploy normally and the aircraft crashed “on its belly,” Mr Krol told the French news agency AFP.
But Russian officials told the Itar-Tass news agency that the plane had encountered severe weather conditions before it came down.
Russian media reports said President Vladimir Putin had been informed of the crash.
The crash comes less than two months after at least 124 people died when a Russian Airbus A-310 skidded off a runway and burst into flames in the city of Irkutsk in Siberia.
from the BBC website.
By: Matt K - 22nd August 2006 at 16:07
Just realised that there was already a convo on this, my appologies.
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August 22, 2006 at 4:04 pm