All 145 people aboard a Russian aircraft that crashed in southern Siberia yesterday died in the accident, Russia's emergency situations ministry said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
The three-engine Tupolev TU-154 plane crashed near the town of Irkutsk, close to the Mongolian border. There were at least 133 passengers and 10 crew members on board.
The aircraft belonging to the Vladivostokavia airline, disappeared from radar screens on a flight from the Urals city of Yekaterinburg to Vladivostok in the Russian far east, the ministry spokesman said.
It came down 34 km (20 miles) from Irkutsk, the spokesman said, and ground and aerial search parties were on their way to the area near the village of Budyonnovka.
"The plane left on time but we have heard nothing about the scheduled landing in Irkutsk," a dispatcher at Yekaterinburg airport said earlier. The plane was supposed to have flown on to Vladivostok from Irkutsk.
RIA news agency quoted witnesses describing a large explosion in an area where many locals have dachas, or small country homes, not far from Lake Baikal.
The Kremlin press office said President Vladimir Putin ordered the Prime Minister, Mr Mikhail Kasyanov, to form a commission to investigate the crash. The Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Ilya Klebanov, was to chair the body.
Russia has an ageing civil aviation fleet, mostly built in Soviet times, but has not suffered a major air disaster in several years. A Russian military plane crashed in Georgia last October, killing more than 80 people.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, civil aviation fell into a steep decline.