Syria-bound Russia jet crashes, 92 dead

MOSCOW: A Russian military plane carrying 92 people, including dozens of Red Army Choir singers, dancers and orchestra members, crashed into the Black Sea on its way to Syria on Sunday, killing everyone on board, Russian authorities said.

The cause of the crash wasn’t immediately known. At least one expert cited a terror attack as a possible reason — a scenario rejected by Russian officials.

The Russian defence ministry said the TU-154 Tupolev plane had disappeared from radar screens two minutes after taking off from Sochi in southern Russia, where it had stopped to refuel from Moscow, on its way to Syria. Major general Igor Konashenkov, a ministry spokesman, told reporters that nobody had survived. By Sunday afternoon, rescue teams had recovered 10 bodies from the crash site.

“The area of the crash site has been established. No survivors have been spotted,” he said. An unnamed ministry source told Russian news agencies no life rafts were found, while another source told the Interfax agency that the plane had not sent an SOS signal.

In televised comments, President Vladimir Putin declared December 26 a national day of mourning.

The jet, a Soviet-era Tupolev plane built in 1983, was carrying 84 passengers and eight crew members. At least 60 were members of the Alexandrov Ensemble, better known internationally as the Red Army Choir, and were being flown out to Russia’s Hmeymim air base in Syria to entertain troops in the run-up to the New Year.

Nine Russian reporters were also on board as well as military servicemen. Konashenkov said fragments of the plane had been found at a depth of about 70 metres in the Black Sea about 1.5km off the coast near the city of Sochi.

Six ships from Russia’s Black Sea fleet were on their way to the crash site, and more than 100 divers were being drafted in to search the area along with a mini-submarine.

Russia’s RIA news agency said preliminary information indicated that the plane had crashed because of a technical malfunction or a pilot error. Another source told Russian agencies that the possibility of a militant act had been ruled out. The weather had been good.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters it was too early to say what had caused the crash.

Russia’s defence ministry regularly flies musicians into Syria to put on concerts for military personnel. The base they were heading for, Hmeymim, is in Latakia province. It is from there that Russia launches air strikes against Syrian rebels.