A RUSSIAN aircraft plunged into a snow covered mountain on a remote Arctic island in northern Norway yesterday and rescue officials said there were no survivors among the 143 people aboard.
The charter flight from Moscow was carrying 129 passengers, coal miners and their families from Russia and Ukraine, and 14 crew members, when it crashed near the airport on Spitsbergen, one of five islands in the Svalbard archipelago, north east of Greenland,
About 1,600 Russians and Ukranians and about 1,200 Norwegians live on the islands.
The Norwegian Prime Minister, Ms Gro Harlem Brundtland, said it was the country's worst ever air disaster.
"No survivors have been found," said Mr Kjetil Antonsen, spokesman for the island's local authority, adding that all rescue operations have been called off. "We don't think there is any hope."
It was earlier said that 141 had died, before it was discovered that the aircraft had two more crew members than previously thought.
The Interfax news agency, quoting the aircraft's owner, Vnukovo Airlines, had reported from Moscow that five people from Flight 2801 had survived, but were injured and had been taken to hospital.
However, Mr Antonsen said that report was wrong. "I don't know where the Russians got their information from," he said. "We have searched the area with police officers and the medical personnel turned hack because nobody has been found alive."
The Tupolev Tu-154 crashed yesterday morning in bad weather lust east of Longyearbyen Airport on Spitsbergen, a sparsely populated island which is closer to the North Pole than the Norwegian capital of Oslo.
The exact cause of the crash is not yet known. However, rescue workers said weather conditions and visibility were poor at the time the aircraft went down and deteriorated during the day as the search continued.
The control tower at Longyearbyen suddenly lost contact at about 10.15 a.m., shortly before the Tupolev was due to land, but no distress signal had been given.
Flight 2804 had left Moscow's Vnukovo Airport at 8.30 a.m., a spokeswoman for the airline said. It was carrying Russian and Ukranian miners, who worked for Russian coal company Arktikugol, and their families.
Rescue officials who mounted an operation using helicopters and an air ambulance, said the aircraft appeared to have slammed into Opera Mountain near the town of Longyearbyen.
Wreckage was found on the summit and at the foot of the mountain, according to rescuers cited by Mr Antonsen.
A three member Norwegian commission of inquiry has left Oslo for the archipelago to determine how the accident happened. In addition, a Russian governmental commission is due to leave today for Spits berg, said Moscow Echo radio.
Ms Brundtland sent a message of condolence to the Russian Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin.
"The biggest air crash ever to have happened on Norwegian soil has hit the people of Russia hard," she said in a statement from Oslo. I would like to send the government's deepest sympathy to those who have lost someone dear in this tragedy."