Scores die in Russian plane crash

A passenger plane that crashed on the outskirts of a Russian city, killing all 88 people on board, probably had a technical failure, officials say.

The Boeing-737-500, belonging to a branch of the national airline Aeroflot, was on a flight from Moscow to Perm, near the Ural mountains.

Twenty-one foreign passengers were on board.

Radio contact with the plane was lost as it was landing amid low cloud cover, said the airline.

"The Boeing-737 carried 82 passengers on board, including seven children, and six crew," Aeroflot said in a statement.

'Completely destroyed'

"As the plane was coming in for landing, it lost communication at the height of 1,100 metres and air controllers lost its blip. The airplane was found within Perm's city limits completely destroyed and on fire."

The minister for security in the region said the plane was on fire before it crashed.

"The fire broke at an altitude of 1000 metres," he said.

Contact with the plane was lost at 0321 Moscow time on Sunday (0021 BST), said the airline.

The flight crashed on the city outskirts, just a few hundred metres from residential buildings, but no one was hurt on the ground.

Part of the Trans-Siberian railway was shut down as a result of damage to the main east-west train track.

The blaze raged for two hours before firefighters were able to put it out.

The 21 foreigners killed were listed as nine people from Azerbaijan, five from Ukraine and one person each from France, Switzerland, Latvia, the United States, Germany, Turkey and Italy, Aeroflot said.

The most likely cause of the crash was technical failure, Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the federal prosecutors' Investigative Committee, told Russian television.

Investigators have recovered two black box recorders from the crash site. There was no immediate suggestion of an attack or sabotage.

Scorched earth

Correspondents say the tragedy will be a setback for Russian aviation, which has been trying to shake off a chequered safety record.

Aeroflot deputy director Lev Koshlyakov said no problem was reported with the 15-year-old jet when it was last inspected at the beginning of 2008.

A woman in Perm told Vesti-24 TV how she was thrown out of bed by the force of the blast when the plane crashed.

She said: "My daughter ran in from the next room crying: 'What happened? Has a war begun or what?'

"My neighbours, other witnesses, told me that it was burning in the air, it looked like a comet."

Pavel Shevchenko, 36, who lives in Perm near the crash site, told AP news agency that a neighbour saw the plane hitting the ground sharply - at a 30 or 40 degree angle.

The aircraft belonged to Aeroflot-Nord - Aeroflot's regional airline.

Sunday's accident was the deadliest involving a Russian airliner since 170 people died in August 2006 when a Tupolev-154 bound for St Petersburg crashed in Ukraine.