MOSCOW: More than 150 people died in a plane crash in the Siberian city of Irkutsk in Russia early on Sunday, Interfax news agency quoted local prosecutors and police as saying.
"As a result of the air crash, 43 people were taken to hospital with burns. The rest have died, according to preliminary information," Interfax quoted a source at the prosecutor's office in Irkutsk as saying.
Many of those on board were holidaymakers bound for a vacation on Lake Baikal, a popular Siberian spot in summer, Itar-Tass news agency said.
Television pictures from the scene showed the smoking ruins of the Airbus, which ploughed into garage buildings adjacent to the runway. Only the plane's tail section was left intact.
Around 600 rescue workers were at the scene. Rescue teams, working in rainy weather and poor visibility, used cutting equipment to recover bodies from the smouldering wreckage.
"We can confirm that the plane crashed on landing and caught fire," a spokesman for Sibir, the company that operated the plane, said. "We don't have information on the cause of the accident or the number of victims."
Last May, an Airbus A-320 of the Armenian airline Armavia, with 113 passengers and crew flying from Yerevan to the Russian seaside resort Sochi, crashed in the Black Sea while trying to land in bad weather. Everyone on board was killed.
