September 15, 2008	Monday	Ramazan 14, 1429

PERM (Russia), Sept 14: An Aeroflot Boeing-737 jet crashed on Sunday on the outskirts of Perm in Russia’s Ural mountains, killing all 88 passengers and crew on board.

At least 20 foreigners and seven children were on the plane which burst into flames as it prepared to land at the end of a two-hour flight from Moscow. The wreckage cut off a stretch of the Trans-Siberian railway.

“It was burning while still in the sky and it looked like a falling comet,” a witness told Russia’s Vesti-24 television. Aeroflot said the pane plunged to ground moments after controllers lost radio contact with it, narrowly missing a densely-populated area.

The airline confirmed that there were no survivors. The dead included nine people from Azerbaijan, five from Ukraine and one each from France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Switzerland and Turkey. One passenger was said to be American.

Among the victims was Gen Gennady Troshev, a former commander of Russia’s war in Chechnya and adviser to ex-president Vladimir Putin, Interfax news agency reported.

Aeroflot chief Valery Okulov held a press conference after meeting relatives of some of the victims. He refused to be drawn into whether the crash could have been the work of terrorists.

A statement from the carrier held few clues to the cause of the crash. “As the plane was coming in for landing, it lost communication at the height of 1,100 metres and air controllers lost its blip,” it said. “The airplane was found within Perm’s city limits completely destroyed and on fire.”—AFP