A passenger plane carrying one of Russia’s top ice hockey teams crashed shortly after takeoff near the city of Yaroslavl today, killing 43 people.
The Yak-42 aircraft was headed from the city north of Moscow to Minsk in Belarus when it crashed, an official at state aviation agency Rosaviatsia said.
It was carrying the Lokomotiv ice hockey team to play Dinamo Minsk in the opening game of the season of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). The plane was carrying 45 people, 37 passengers and eight crew, and two people survived the crash.
Interfax cited a security official as saying the plane caught fire after the crash near the airport outside Yaroslavl, 250km north of Moscow. Citing a Rosaviatsia official, Interfax reported that the plane had trouble gaining altitude and hit an antenna near the runway.
The crash occurred while Russia was hosting an international political forum in Yaroslavl that president Dmitry Medvedev was expected to address this week. Mr Medvedev's spokeswoman, Natalya Timakova, said he expressed his condolences and would alter his plans for the forum.
The plane that crashed was relatively new, built in 1993, and belonged to a small Yak Service company.
Lokomotiv Yaroslavl is a leading force in Russian hockey and came third in the KHL last year. The team’s coach is Canadian Brad McCrimmon, who took over in May. He was recently an assistant coach with the Detroit Red Wings, and played 18 years in the NHL for Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Hartford and Phoenix.
The Russian team also featured several top European players and former NHL stars, including Slovakian forward and national team captain Pavol Demitra, who played in the NHL for the St. Louis Blues and Vancouver Canucks.
"There has been a terrible tragedy," Mr Medvedev said after the league's opening match in the city of Ufa was interrupted by news of the crash. He announced a minute's silence and postponed the match.
The Czech players killed were Jan Marek, Karel Rachunek and Josef Vasicek, all stars of the national side that won the world championship six times since 1996, the Czech embassy in Moscow said.
The Slovak foreign ministry confirmed there was one Slovak victim, and that the only Slovak national on the passenger list was Demitra, a forward who led the national side at last year's World Championship. Swedish goaltender Stefan Livalso was also among those killed.
"This is the darkest day in the history of our sport," International Ice Hockey Federation President Rene Fasel said in a statement posted on the federation website www.iihf.com.
"This is not only a Russian tragedy, the Lokomotiv roster included players and coaches from ten nations."
"This tragedy represents a catastrophic loss to the hockey world - including the NHL family, which lost so many fathers, sons, teammates and friends who at one time excelled in our League," NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in a statement.
The KHL is an international club league that pits together teams from Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Latvia and Slovakia. Lokomotiv was a three-time Russian League champion in 1997, 2002-2003. It took bronze last season.
Prime minister Vladimir Putin ordered transport minister Igor Levitin to travel to the site of the crash, and Jedvedev sent his first deputy chief of staff, Vladislav Surkov.
Swarms of police and rescue crews rushed to Tunoshna, a picturesque village with a blue-domed church on the banks of the Volga River.
One resident, Irina Pryakhova, saw the plane going down. “It was wobbling in flight, it was clear that something was wrong,” she said. “It went down behind the trees and there was a bang and a plume of smoke.”
She said rescuers pulled victims’ bodies out of the Volga River. “I saw them pulling bodies to the shore, some still in their seats with seatbelts on,” Ms Pryakhova said.
A cup match between hockey teams Salavat Yulaev and Atlant in the central Russian city of Ufa was called off after news of the crash was announced by KHL head Alexander Medvedev.
Russian television broadcast images of an empty arena in Ufa as grief-stricken fans abandoned the stadium.
“We will do our best to ensure that hockey in Yaroslavl does not die, and that it continues to live for the people that were on that plane,” said Russian Ice Hockey Federation President Vladislav Tretyak.
The plane crash was the deadliest in Russia since a Tupolev Tu-134 jet crashed while trying to land in fog in the northern city of Petrozavodsk, killing 45.
Agencies