Take-off turns into plane crash horror

A KAZAKH plane with 98 people aboard has crashed shortly after take-off, killing at least 15 people, officials in Almaty said.

In a statement on its Facebook page, the airport said there was no fire and a rescue operation got under way immediately following the crash.

Survivors described walking from the wreckage into the dark and snow.

At least 60 injured people were taken to hospitals.

Kazakhstan’s interior ministry said six children were among the dead.

Almaty’s airport reported that Bek Air flight Z92100 was carrying 93 passengers and five crew. The airport said the plane lost height at 07.22 local time (01.22 GMT), before striking a concrete barrier and crashing into a two-storey building.

Maral Erman, one of the survivors, said the plane was shaking during take-off.

She said it first felt as if the plane had landed, but in fact “we hit something”.

“There wasn’t much chaos on board,” she said. “There was no screaming.”

Ms Erman added that she later saw the plane had “split in half”.

Footage showed the front of the broken-up fuselage had rammed a building, and the rear of the plane lying in the field next to the airport. The plane was flying to Nur-Sultan, the capital formerly known as Astana.

It was identified as a Fokker-100, a medium-sized jet airliner.

The company manufacturing the aircraft went bankrupt in 1996 and the production of the Fokker-100 stopped the following year.

In 2009, all Kazakh airlines – with the exception of the flagship carrier Air Astana – were banned from operating in the European Union because they did not meet international safety standards.

The ban was lifted in 2016.

All Bek Air and Fokker-100 flights in Kazakhstan have been suspended pending investigation of the crash.

Police stand guard as rescuers work at the site of the airliner crash near Almaty International Airport.