A helicopter with nine people on board crashed in southern Russia last night and there was little hope that anyone survived, officials said.
The helicopter, which its owners said was delivering supplies to a construction site in the mountains, was flying near the Black Sea resort city of Sochi when it went missing in heavy fog, said a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry.
Construction workers found the burned-out helicopter near a mountain about 35 miles north of Sochi. Preliminary reports from rescuers who reached the site indicated there were no survivors.
However, Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov, in Moscow, later said that rescue workers sent to the rugged area had not yet reached the crash site.
Ground controllers lost communication with the crew after hearing a bang. Mountaineers in the area told emergency officials in Sochi that they had seen a helicopter flying low over the mountains and then heard an explosion and saw smoke.
The crash, which came just as Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Sochi, follows two recent helicopter crashes that killed 26 people last month in Russia's Far East.
AP