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Plane crash: All 170 dead
22/08/2006 22:45 - (SA)
Sukha Balka - All 170 people aboard a Russian airliner were killed on Tuesday when the plane crashed in eastern Ukraine after it ran into severe weather and was struck by lightning, officials said.
The plane, a Tupolev-154 jet owned by the Russian airline Pulkovo, was on a flight from the Russian Black Sea coast city of Anapa to Saint Petersburg when it crashed 45km north of the Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
Airline officials said there were 160 passengers and 10 crew members aboard the plane, including dozens of young children and an undetermined number of foreign nationals.
"Everyone is dead," Irina Andrianovna, spokesperson for the Russian emergency situations ministry, was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying.
Ukrainian media said at least 30 bodies had been recovered.
The cause of the crash was under investigation, but officials in both Ukraine and Russia indicated that severe weather had played a major role.
Igor Krol, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian emergency situations ministry, told Interfax Ukraine news agency that the crew declared a fire onboard shortly before the plane went down.
Krol said the plane was flying at an altitude of 10 000m when the crew reported the fire on board and prepared to make an emergency landing.
The plane's landing gear failed to deploy normally, he said, and the aircraft crashed "on its belly" near the village of Sukha Balka in eastern Ukraine.
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