IRKUTSK (Russia), July 9: At least 137 people died when a Russian Airbus plane veered off a runway, slammed into a concrete wall and burst into flames while landing on Sunday here in the Siberian city, officials said.
“Sixty-three people survived the crash... There were 200 people on board,” a spokesman for the Irkutsk section of the emergency situations ministry said.
Eleven people walked away from the crash site and 52 others were hospitalised, he said, adding that 120 bodies have been recovered from the fuselage so far.
The incident occurred when the Airbus A310 careered off the tarmac in slippery conditions, hit the concrete wall and ploughed into a complex of garages used by local residents, the officials said.
Fourteen children, including a group on their way to a holiday in the scenic Lake Baikal region, and 11 foreign nationals were on board the Sibir airline plane, Interfax quoted the company as saying.
The foreigners were three Chinese, two Germans, two Moldovans, two Poles and two South Koreans.
It was the second recent crash of an Airbus plane in Russia, after an Armenian Airbus A320 crashed into the Black Sea near Sochi in May killing all 113 on board.
Sunday’s incident occurred at 8:00 am as the flight from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport was landing in the city in central Siberia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed “his deep condolences to relatives and friends of those who died in the plane crash in Irkutsk”, the Kremlin press service said.—AFP
