Russian airliner crashes in eastern Ukraine, 170 dead

Updated at 11.08pm

SUKHA BALKA/UKRAINE: 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 45 kilometers (28 miles) 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, spokeswoman 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 spokesman for the Ukrainian emergency situations ministry, told Interfax Ukraine news agency that the crew declared a fire onboard shortly before the plane went down.        

Andrianovna said the aircraft was hit by lightning and reiterated assertions from other aviation officials that severe weather was to blame for the disaster.      

"According to preliminary information, the catastrophe occurred as the result of a lightning strike as the plane flew into a storm front," Interfax quoted Andianovna as saying.         

Krol said the plane was flying at an altitude of 10,000 meters (33,000 feet) when the crew reported the fire on board and undertook preparations 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.   

Vassili Nalyotenko, the deputy chief of the main airport in Saint Petersburg, said passenger lists showed there were non-Russians aboard the plane.          

"There were foreigners onboard, including Dutch people," Nalyotenko told reporters at the airport.          

At the airport in Saint Petersburg, around 60 grief-stricken relatives and friends of passengers aboard the ill-fated flight were taken into a cinema where several dozen psychologists were on hand to assist them. Members of the media and general public were prevented from entering the area around the cinema.             

At the site of the crash, a thick white pall of smoke hung in the air as rescuers worked to retrieve bodies and firefighters continued to extinguish the last burning pieces of the plane. Wreckage was scattered over marshlands where the plane went down and a large part of the surrounding area was burned. The site was cordoned off but journalists could see that the plane's fuselage was completely destroyed.          

The plane, a Tupolev 154 tri-engine jet similar in size and construction to a Boeing 727, can carry around 180 passengers and has been used as a workhorse of civil aviation fleets in Russia and other former Soviet states.             

Anapa, located along the same stretch of Black Sea coast as the better-known resort town Sochi, is a popular holiday destination for many Russians.     

In Kiev, the Ukrainian government announced the creation of a special commission to assist relatives of crash victims, to be headed by Transport Minister Mykola Rudkovski.          

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko was briefed on the crash after he returned to Kiev from a vacation in Crimea, while Foreign Minister Boris Tarasyuk expressed his condolences and promised Ukraine would help in the crash investigation.              

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is currently on a summer holiday in Sochi, was also quickly informed about the crash, the Kremlin press service said.    

In May, 113 people died when an Armenian airliner crashed into the Black Sea near the coastal town of Sochi during bad weather. Air traffic controllers later attributed the crash to pilot error.       

In July, 127 people died when a Russian airliner flying from Moscow to the Siberian city of Irkutsk veered off the runway after landing and crashed into neighbouring buildings. There had been 203 people on board.