All 50 passengers killed in Russia plane crash

A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed in a remote area of Russia’s far eastern Amur region yesterday, killing everyone on board, authorities said.

The aircraft, a Soviet-made twin-propeller Antonov-24, went down in thickly forested terrain, leaving a column of smoke rising from the crash site and no signs of survivors, according to state media and videos released by investigators.

The Angara Airlines flight was en route to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar around 1:00 p.m. local time (0400 GMT).

A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage on a forested mountain slope about 15 kilometres (nine miles) south of Tynda’s airport. Videos published by investigators showed smoke billowing from the crash site and fragments of the plane scattered across the forest floor.

A search and rescue team arrived hours after the crash at the hard-to-reach site but found no evidence of survivors, according to the state news agency TASS.

Investigators have not disclosed the cause of the crash.

Weather conditions at the time were poor, Angara Airlines CEO Sergei Salamanov told Russia’s REN TV channel. “The commander made the decision to carry out the flight,” he was quoted as saying.Tynda, with a population of about 30,000, lies in an area of dense taiga forest about 200 kilometres from the Chinese border.