'I saw people burning'

2006-07-09 12:02

Irkutsk - A Russian airliner crashed on landing and burst into flames in Siberia on Sunday, killing at least 120 people and injuring more than 50, emergency officials said.

Many of the 200 people on board were children flying for holidays on Lake Baikal, a popular Siberian spot in summer, media reported.

"It was awful. I saw people burning, they were burning," one female survivor told Russia's First Channel television.

Sibir airlines flight 778 from Moscow to Irkutsk, an Airbus A-310, overshot the runway at around 02:50 Moscow time (22:50 GMT on Saturday). It ploughed through a wall into nearby buildings and caught fire.

"I heard a bang and the earth shook," Mikhail Yegerev, a witness in his fifties, told Reuters. "I went out and saw plumes of smoke and the plane's tail."

Television pictures showed the smoking ruins of the plane in between several lockup garages. Only its tail section, bearing the white-on-blue logo of Sibir airlines, was still intact.

"My garage is here. I ran there and saw people coming - blackened with smoke, with injuries, burns and a woman with a broken leg. I helped her and gave her a lift," Yegerev said.

Chief emergencies ministry spokesperson Viktor Beltsov said 120 bodies had been recovered so far, 54 people survived and 53 were still in hospital. The fate of 26 passengers was unknown.

Of the survivors, who included a stewardess and a pilot, 11 escaped through an emergency exit, media reported. There were eight crew on board.

Around 600 rescue workers, amid rain and poor visibility, used cutting equipment to recover bodies from the wreckage.

At Moscow's Domodedovo airport, where flight 778 took off on Saturday evening, friends and relatives sought news of their loved ones at an improvised emergency information centre.

One man, called Vyacheslav, lost his brother, wife and 4-year-old child in the crash, his friend Larisa Kolcheva said.

"We were sitting with them yesterday before they got on the flight," she told Reuters. "I just can't believe this has happened."

Error or failure?

Prosecutors opened a criminal probe into the crash, with human error and equipment failure considered among the possible causes. There was no immediate suspicion of foul play.

Transport minister Igor Levitin said the plane's pilots had told air traffic controllers they had landed successfully but then radio contact broke off suddenly, news agencies reported.

Levitin, speaking before flying from Moscow to Irkutsk, was also quoted as saying the runway was wet after rain.

"I asked a person who was on board. (He said) it had landed on the tarmac and was speeding along without braking," said witness Yegerev. "Then, he said, flame had erupted in the cabin and then there was an impact when it broke through the wall."

Airbus said the crashed plane, assembled in 1987, had made more than 10 000 flights

The company said it was dispatching a team of specialists to Russia and it would provide full assistance to the authorities.

"The concerns and sympathy of the Airbus employees go to the families, friends and loved ones affected by the accident," a company statement said.

Media reports said the chief of the Irkutsk branch of Russia's FSB security service died in the crash.

- Reuters