A Russian passenger airliner crashed Sunday night while trying to land at the airport in the city of Kazan, killing all 50 people aboard, officials said.
The Boeing 737 belonging to Tatarstan Airlines crashed about 7:20 pm local time (2050 IST), an hour after taking off from Moscow. There were no immediate indications of the cause.
Reports said the plane appeared to lose altitude as it was making a second landing attempt, crashing and catching fire.
Kazan, a city of about 1.1 million and the capital of the Tatarstan republic, is about 720 kilometres east of Moscow. Weather in Kazan was reported to be light precipitation and winds of about 8 metres per second.
A spokeswoman for the Emergencies Ministry, Irina Rossius, said there were 44 passengers and six crew members aboard and all had been killed. The ministry released a list of the dead, which included Irek Minnikhanov, the son of Tatarstan's governor, and also Alexander Antonov, who headed the Tatarstan branch of the Federal Security Service.
The ministry also released photographs from the nighttime crash scene showing parts of the aircraft and debris scattered across the ground.
A journalist who said she had flown on the same aircraft from Kazan to Moscow's Domodedovo airport earlier in the day told Channel One state television that the landing in Moscow had been frightening because of a strong vibration during the final minutes of the flight.
"When we were landing it was not clear whether there was a strong wind, although in Moscow the weather was fine, or some kind of technical trouble or problem with the flight," said Lenara Kashafutdinova. "We were blown in different directions, the plane was tossed around. The man sitting next to me was white as a sheet."
Russia has seen a string of deadly crashes in recent years. Some have been blamed on the use of aging aircraft, but industry experts point to a number of other problems, including poor crew training, crumbling airports, lax government controls and widespread neglect of safety in the pursuit of profits.
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