PERM, Russia: Engine failure caused an Aeroflot Boeing 737-500 plane crash in Russia yesterday which killed all 88 people on board, officials said, dismissing fears terrorists had attacked the airliner.
The dead included 21 foreign nationals flying on the plane from Moscow to Perm in the Urals when it plunged into scrubland and railway on the edge of the city, narrowly missing houses.
Russian news agencies and television quoted eyewitnesses who said they saw an explosion before the plane fell to earth and wreckage was spread over a wide area fueling speculation of a terrorist attack. But Russian officials investigating the crash said a faulty engine had forced the plane to crash.
“We have no information that the aircraft exploded in midair,” Interfax news agency quoted Russia’s Transport Minister Igor Levitin as saying.
Alexander Bastrykin from the Russian Prosecutor-General’s office investigating the crash blamed it on a technical fault, according to RIA Novosti news agency.
“Judging by inspections from the scene ... the aircraft crash was connected to technical defects of the right engine,” he said. Fragments of debris covered a section of the Trans-Siberian Railway, forcing trains to divert around the Perm area.
“There were 88 people on board, 82 passengers and six crew,” said Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova. “All of them died.” Seven children were killed in the crash and Aeroflot said 21 foreign nationals were among the dead — nine from Azerbaijan, five from Ukraine and one person each from France, Switzerland, Latvia, the US, Germany, Turkey and Italy.
Contact with the airliner was lost when it was at an altitude of 3,600 ft while descending to land, said an Aeroflot spokeswoman.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sent condolences to the Perm regional governor.
