At least 44 people were killed when a passenger plane broke up and caught fire on coming into land in heavy fog in northwestern Russia, an emergency ministry spokeswoman said today.
Pilot error was the most likely cause of the crash, in which eight others were injured, Russian deputy prime minister Sergei Ivanov said today.
"From the initial external data the pilot's mistake is clear - in bad weather conditions he veered to the right of the runway and in foggy conditions searched for the runway visually until the last minute [and] did not find it," Mr Ivanov said in France on a visit with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Mr Ivanov, who oversees Russia's aviation industry, said the crash during an attempt to land in poor visibility late yesterday resembled the crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski in Russia in April 2010.
The Tupolev-134 plane, carrying 43 passengers and nine crew, crashed near a road about 1km from the runway at the Besovets airport outside the northern city of Petrozavodsk at about 11.40pm local time (7.40pm Irish time) yesterday evening.
"The preliminary information is that 44 people were killed," the spokeswoman said by telephone. "Eight people were injured."
Photographs on the lifenews.ru news website showed firemen battling with fires among the wreckage of the plane, which crashed about 700km north of Moscow. The news site, which posted a full list of the passengers, said a 10-year-old boy named Anton had survived the crash but gave no details about his condition.
The plane veered off course while coming in to land and controllers ordered the pilot to circle again, but it hit a power line, briefly blacking out the runway lights, Itar-Tass news agency cited a local emergency official as saying.
The plane scraped the treetops and hit a motorway near the airport, breaking into pieces. Photos and video footage showed flames shooting from the wreckage, body parts lying on the road and the plane's wheels lying upside down by the roadside.
"I managed to take a woman or a girl out of there, she was light," Life News quoted a witness as saying. He said he and his father had removed several more people before the plane blew up.
"I didn't have time to do anything else, it all started to explode," he said. "Everything caught fire, there was no way to get close."
The plane hit a car on the road, dragging it under the fuselage, Itar-Tass reported. It was unclear how many people were in the car.
Federal Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said technical failure, pilot or ground crew error and bad weather were among the most likely causes of the crash.
President Dmitry Medvedev offered condolences to victims' relatives and ordered authorities to aid survivors, the Kremlin said.
The plane, operated by the private company RusAir, was travelling from Moscow's Domodedovo airport. RusAir, which specialises in charter flights, declined immediate comment. Most of the passengers were Russian but a Swedish national was also on the aircraft, Interfax news agency said.
The Tuploev-134 is a Soviet aircraft whose maiden flight was in 1967. It was unclear when the plane which crashed was made. The aircraft's black boxes have been recovered.
Mr Medvedev, who has swapped his Tupolev for a French-made executive jet, in April criticised flaws in domestically-built planes and the nation's poor safety record.
One of the most high-profile Tupolev air disasters in recent times occurred in April 2010 when Polish president Lech Kaczynski's official Tupolev Tu-154 plane crashed near Smolensk airport in western Russia, killing 96 people including Kaczynski, his wife and a large number of senior officials.
Agencies