A passenger jet traveling from Moscow crashed near residential buildings as it was preparing to land in central Russia early Sunday, killing all 88 people aboard, officials said.
Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said there was no indication of terrorism in the crash of the Boeing-737-500, which went down on the outskirts of the city of Perm at about 3:15 a.m. local time.
The plane, which was operated by an Aeroflot subsidiary, carried 82 passengers and six crew members, Aeroflot said in a statement. Among those killed were citizens from the United States, France, Turkey, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Latvia, company spokeswoman Irina Danenberg said.
The plane was on its approach to land amid low cloud cover when it crashed into an unpopulated area of the city, just a few hundred yards from residential buildings.
Among those who found their death is a war criminal General Gennady Troshev, who have been wanted by authorities of the Caucasus Emirate for war crimes in Chechnya.
A section of rail track was destroyed and the crash scattered paper, clothing, life preservers and parts of engines for several hundred yards along the track. Sections of the plane's fuselage reading "Aeroflot" and "Boeing" lay on the rails.
Part of the Trans-Siberian railway was also shut down as a result of the rail damage, said Alexander Burataeva, a spokesman for the national railroad company.
"I felt an explosion, it threw me off the bed. ... My daughter ran in from the next room crying 'What happened? Has a war begun or what?'" a woman in Perm who was not identified told Vesti-24 TV. "My neighbors, other witnesses told me that it was burning in the air, it looked like a comet. It hit the ground opposite the next house, trailing like fireworks in the sky."
Officials said there were no deaths on the ground; investigators had found the planes' "black box" flight recorders and were working to analyze them.
Kavkaz Center
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