At least 31 people were killed and 13 were rescued alive from a plane crash in Siberia, Russia's state-run Itar-Tass news agency said today.
The ATR 72, a twin-engine, turbo-prop plane, with 43 people aboard, crashed some 35km from the western Siberian city of Tyumen, emergency situations ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said.
The mid-range plane belonging to Russian airline UTair crashed after taking off from Tyumen on a flight to Surgut, an oil town further north in Siberia. There were 39 passengers and four crew on board, according to preliminary information, Ms Andrianova said.
Injured survivors were flown to hospital by helicopter after the plane caught fire following the crash, the cause of which was not immediately known, Russian news agencies reported.
At least five survivors were in critical condition, state-run RIA news agency reported, citing hospital officials in Tyumen, some 1,720km east of Moscow.
UTair has three ATR-72 craft made by the French-Italian manufacturer ATR, according to the airline's website.
ATR is an equal partnership between two major European aeronautics players, Alenia Aermacchi, a Finmeccanica company, and EADS.
The crash was the deadliest air disaster in Russia since a Yak-42 plane crashed into a riverbank near the city of Yaroslavl after takeoff on September 7th, 2011, killing 44 people and wiping out the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey team.
President Dmitry Medvedev called for a reduction in the number of Russian airlines and improvements in crew training after that crash, which followed a June crash that killed 47 people including a navigator who had been drinking.
Mr Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, who is prime minister until he takes over as president on May 7th, called for moves to improve Russia's air safety after that crash, including better training and improved conditions on board.
But their opponents drew attention to the lack of action and the fact that Transport Minister Igor Levitan remains in office. "It's typical that 'the minister of catastrophes' does not receive even a cosmetic reprimand for all the chaos on public transport. They cover for each other," opposition ecologist Yevgenia Chirikova said in a message on her Twitter account.
Mr Putin said last September that airlines should put passengers' safety above commercial considerations and ordered the government to draft proposals for improving condition on planes and at airports, but he ignored calls to dismiss Mr Levitan.
Reuters