170 die in plane crash
SUKHA BALKA, Ukraine — Investigators today combed through the wreckage of a Russian passenger jet that slammed into a Ukrainian field during a severe thunderstorm, finding fragments of some of the 170 people on board who died.
The two flight recorders from the Pulkovo Airlines' Tu-154 were also found amid the blackened debris, Russian Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Yelena Kalabushkina said. Investigators hope the recorders can explain what caused the third passenger airliner crash this year in the former Soviet Union.
Emergency officials said that preliminary information suggested bad weather caused Tuesday's crash about 30 miles north of the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
The plane was flying to St. Petersburg from the Russian Black Sea resort of Anapa.
"Right now, it is difficult to determine the cause of the accident," Ukraine's Transport Minister Mykola Rudkovsky said in televised remarks.
The wreckage was found about an hour after the plane disappeared from radar screens in Sukha Balka, a village about 400 miles east of the capital, Kiev. Early today, fragments of the plane — its engines, parts of the landing gear, the nose and chunks of the fuselage — were scattered around fields and a small forest. Authorities had stretched red tape around a 7,500-square-foot area.
Alexander Agayev, a Russian Emergency Situations Ministry official, said emergency workers had found fragments from 50 bodies in the wreckage by midday and were continuing with the grim search.
"The first task is to get the bodies out," Oleksandr Livochka, deputy prosecutor from the Donetsk region, said on Ukraine's NTN television.
He warned that identifying the bodies would be difficult, and DNA testing might be needed.
At least 50 relatives were expected to travel to the crash scene later today, said Vasily Nalyotenko, deputy general director of Pulkovo Airlines.
Of the 170 people on board, 45 were children, Pulkovo Airlines deputy director Anatoly Samoshin told reporters at the St. Petersburg airport. The list of passengers, many of whom were from St. Petersburg, appeared to include many families.
"Our citizens are very courageous, but there are very hard cases. In some cases the whole family has died," said Alexander Rzhanenkov, head of St. Petersburg's labor and social welfare committee. He said the city would pay about $3,700 to relatives and cover all burial expenses.
Preliminary information indicated there were five foreigners: two Germans and one each from the Netherlands, France and Finland, officials said.
Pulkovo Airlines said the 39-year-old captain was a very experienced pilot who had flown 11,900 hours.
