A crew member was the sole survivor from Monday's crash of a Tajik airliner in the United Arab Emirates desert which killed 85 people, hospital officials said yesterday.
An official at Sharjah's al-Qassemi hospital said the male crew member was in a satisfactory condition. One local newspaper identified him as Mr Sergei Petrov (37) and said he was the co-pilot of the Tupolev-154 aircraft.
Sharjah airport's general manager, Mr Ghanem al-Hajri, told a news conference the dead included 47 men, 33 women and two children. Three bodies were unidentifiable.
It was the third crash of a Tupolev aircraft this year.
Mr Hajri said the aircraft contacted the control tower at nearby Dubai airport before attempting to land.
"Dubai airport instructed the captain to contact Sharjah airport for landing directions," he said. "The plane then disappeared from Dubai tower's screens."
A Tajik government delegation arrived in Sharjah on Monday night to investigate the cause of the crash.
Mr Mohammad al-Ghaith, director general of the UAE federal civil aviation authority and head of the investigation team, said the black box flight recorder had been found.
Tajik Air sources said the plane had been chartered from the airline to fly from Khudzhand in northern Tajikistan and carried 77 passengers and nine crew, all of them Tajik nationals.
The Gulf News daily quoted airport officials as saying the crash occurred after one of the plane's three engines fell off as it was trying to land.
A police source said on Monday night the airliner exploded in midair and crashed near the village of al-Zeid, about 13 km from Sharjah airport.