Crashed Airbus 'caught fire'

2006-07-09 10:15

Irkutsk, Russia - At least 140 people died when a Russian Airbus plane veered off a runway and caught fire while landing Sunday in the Siberian provincial centre of Irkutsk, officials said.

"Forty-nine people are in hospital. Eleven people left the plane and walked away - we are appealing for them to come back," an official at a crisis centre set up in Irkutsk told AFP.

Between 200 and 202 people were on board the Sibir airline plane bound from Moscow, including a group of children on their way to a holiday, according to different officials.

A spokesperson for the Irkutsk section of the emergency situations ministry said that 120 bodies had been recovered. The recovery of bodies was continuing, he told AFP.

The incident occurred when the Airbus A310 careered off the tarmac during landing and crashed into a concrete wall close to airport buildings, bursting into a huge wall of flame, the emergency situations ministry said.

It was the second recent crash of an Airbus plane in Russia, after an Armenian Airbus A320 crashed into the Black Sea near Sochi in May killing all 113 on board.

Sunday's incident occurred at 08:00 (23:00 GMT Saturday) as the flight from Moscow's Domodedovo airport was landing in the city in central Siberia, five time zones east of Moscow.

Russia's Vesti 24-hour news channel broadcast images recorded on a mobile phone that showed flames and thick black smoke billowing from the fuselage of the plane.

Survivors were evacuated from the rear of the plane, while the fire raged for three hours before it was extinguished, officials said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin "expresses his deep condolences to relatives and friends of those who died in the plane crash in Irkutsk," the Kremlin press service said.

The Russian president ordered a government investigation commission to be set up, transport minister Igor Levitin was quoted by Interfax as saying as he left Moscow to join the investigation.

No definite reason for the crash has yet been put forward, but officials said that the black box flight recorders have been found and sent to Moscow for examination.

"There are many versions," the spokesman for the emergency situations ministry said.

"The landing gear may have caught fire while landing, igniting the rest of the plane. Or there was a short circuit while the plane was still in the air, which disabled the brakes," the spokesman told AFP.

Prosecutors announced they had opened a criminal enquiry into the crash.

Among those on board the plane were a group of children on their way to a holiday in the popular Lake Baikal region near Irkutsk, as well as the head of the FSB security service for the Irkutsk region, General Sergei Koryakov, officials said.

The landing at Irkutsk airport is believed to be one of the most difficult in Russia because the surrounding territory is mountainous and the runway is relatively short.

In a previous major accident at Irkutsk airport in 2001, all 145 people aboard a Tu-154 jet were killed as the plane was coming in for landing.

- AFP