170 dead as Russian airliner crashes in Ukraine

Sukha Balka, Ukraine - All 170 people aboard a Russian airliner were killed Tuesday when the plane crashed in eastern Ukraine after it ran into severe weather and was struck by lightning, officials said.

The plane, a Tupolev-154 jet owned by the Russian airline Pulkovo, was on a flight from the Russian Black Sea coast city of Anapa to Saint Petersburg when it crashed 45 kilometres (28 miles) north of the Ukrainian city of Donetsk.

Airline officials said there were 160 passengers and 10 crew members aboard the plane, including dozens of young children and an undetermined number of foreign nationals.

"Everyone is dead," Irina Andrianovna, spokeswoman for the Russian emergency situations ministry, was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying.

Ukrainian media said at least 30 bodies had been recovered.

The cause of the crash was under investigation but officials in both Ukraine and Russia indicated that severe weather had played a major role.

Igor Krol, a spokesman for the Ukrainian emergency situations ministry, told Interfax Ukraine news agency that the crew declared a fire on board shortly before the plane went down.

Andrianovna said the aircraft was hit by lightning and reiterated assertions from other aviation officials that severe weather was to blame for the disaster.

"According to preliminary information, the catastrophe occurred as the result of a lightning strike as the plane flew into a storm front," Interfax quoted Andrianovna as saying.

Krol said the plane was flying at an altitude of 10,000 metres (33,000 feet) when the crew reported the fire on board and prepared to make an emergency landing.

The plane's landing gear failed to deploy normally, he said, and the aircraft crashed "on its belly" near the village of Sukha Balka in eastern Ukraine.

Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika on Tuesday evening announced the opening of a criminal inquiry into a possible "violation of safety rules".

Vassili Nalyotenko, the deputy chief of the main airport in Saint Petersburg, said the weather had been "fine" when the accident took place, and the plane had conformed to safety rules.

"The plane dated back to 1992 and had done 24,215 flying hours, 9,000 of them since the last repairs," he told reporters at the airport.

Nalyotenko also said passenger lists showed there were non-Russians aboard the plane.

"There were foreigners onboard, including Dutch people," he said.

At the airport in Saint Petersburg, around 60 grief-stricken relatives and friends of passengers aboard the flight were taken into a cinema where several dozen psychologists were on hand to assist them.

At the site of the crash, a thick white pall of smoke hung in the air as rescuers worked to retrieve bodies and firefighters continued to extinguish the last burning pieces of the plane.

Wreckage was scattered over marshlands where the plane went down and a large part of the surrounding area was burned. The site was cordoned off but journalists could see that the plane's fuselage was completely destroyed.

The plane, a tri-engine jet similar in size and construction to a Boeing 727, can carry around 180 passengers and has been used as a workhorse of civil aviation fleets in Russia and other former Soviet states.

Anapa, located along the same stretch of Black Sea coast as the better-known resort town Sochi, is a popular holiday destination for many Russians.

In Kiev, the Ukrainian government announced the creation of a special commission to assist relatives of crash victims, to be headed by Transport Minister Mykola Rudkovski.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko promised to cooperate fully with Russia in investigating the cause of the crash and repatriating the victims' bodies.

Yushchenko spoke to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to assure him that "Ukraine would provide all necessary assistance to the Russian state commission investigating the causes of the disaster", and with the "identification and repatriation of the bodies", his office said in a statement.

"In the name of all the Ukrainian people, President Viktor Yushchenko expressed his sincerest condolences to the Russian President Vladimir Putin," the statement said.

Yushchenko also announced a day of mourning for the crash's victims to be held on Wednesday, with state flags flying at half-mast and all entertainment and sports broadcasts cancelled.

Putin in his turn named August 24 as the day of mourning in Russia.

The presidents also agreed that Chaika, the Russian prosecutor general, should travel to the scene of the tragedy, where Russian investigators began arriving on Tuesday evening.

Rescuers from Russia's emergency situations ministry left for the crash site overnight.

Agence France Presse