43 die in plane crash outside Russian city

ALMOST THE entire squad of a leading Russian ice hockey team have been killed after their plane crashed and burst into flames shortly after take-off from the city of Yaroslavl.

The Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team was setting off for Minsk in Belarus to play their first match of the season when, according to preliminary reports, their Yak-42 plane struggled to gain height and plunged to the ground, with parts of the wreckage spiralling into the river Volga. Some officials said the plane struck an airport antenna before crashing.

Russia’s emergencies ministry said the plane was carrying 37 passengers and eight crew, and that all but two of those on board were killed. The Interfax news agency quoted local police as saying the survivors were Lokomotiv Yaroslavl winger Alexander Galimov (26) and a crew member, and that both were in a serious condition in hospital.

"Galimov has 80 per cent burns. He's had an operation and will need a few more. The flight engineer Sizov has 15 per cent burns and broken hips," said Alexander Degtyarev, the chief doctor at Yaroslavl's main hospital, according to local newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda Yaroslavl.

On its website, the newspaper quoted club spokesman Vladimir Malkov saying that the first-team squad and four players from the youth team had been due to fly to Minsk.

“The plane carrying our team was supposed to take off at about four o’clock in the afternoon,” Mr Malkov said. “At first we couldn’t believe it. But now there is no hope. The team has died.”

The mostly Russian team was coached by a Canadian and included several top players from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Sweden.

Pictures from the crash site showed burning wreckage half-submerged in the Volga. Witnesses said the plane came down just a few hundred metres from the runway in clear, calm weather.

Yesterday evening, workers in small boats plied the river looking for bodies, while others heaved the dead on to stretchers and struggled to carry them up the muddy riverbank to waiting vehicles.

“It was wobbling in flight, it was clear that something was wrong,” local woman Irina Pryakhova said of the plane. “I saw them pulling bodies to the shore, some still in their seats with seatbelts on.”

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev sent senior aide Vladislav Surkov to the site, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin dispatched transport minister Igor Levitin. The crash coincided with a major international political forum in Yaroslavl, which Mr Medvedev is due to attend.

Lokomotiv Yaroslavl are three-time Russian champions. The team took third place last year in the so-called Kontinental Hockey League, a competition involving clubs from Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Latvia and Slovakia.