Russia jet horror

All 71 on board, including five-year-old girl, die in plane crash

INVESTIGATORS were last night desperately hunting for answers after a Russian passenger plane crashed, killing all 71 on board – including a fiveyear-old girl.

The jet broke apart just minutes after leaving Russia’s second busiest airport, Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, according to witnesses.

Several children were among those killed, including Nadezhda Krasova, 5 – whose mother Oksana also died – Evgeny Livanov, 12, and Ilya Poletayev, 17.

The Saratov Airlines service was flying to Orsk, a city in the Urals near the Kazakhstan border, but crashed on the outskirts of Moscow on Sunday afternoon (local time), claiming the lives of 65 passengers and six crew.

Witnesses in the village of Argunovo saw a burning plane falling from the sky.

Aviation website FlightRadar reported the aircraft was last measured falling at a rate of 22,000ft a minute.

State television broadcast video of the crash site, showing parts of the wreckage in the snow. Debris was said to be scattered over an almost kilometre-wide radius.

Russia has seen record high snowfalls in recent days and visibility was reportedly poor at the time of the crash.

But if there was a mid-air structural failure, investigators are likely to be considering other explanations for the crash, including a terror attack.

“Among possible causes of the crash are weather conditions, pilot error or a technical malfunction,” an emergency services source told the Russian news agency Tass.

Transport minister Maxim Sokolov said DNA tests would be needed to help identify all the dead. President Vladimir Putin offered his “profound condolences” to the families of those on board.

Emergency workers rushing towards the wreckage were reportedly unable to reach the crash site by road, and had to walk to the scene.