71 feared dead as Russian plane crashes near Moscow - VIDEO 

  11 February 2018    Read: 3047
71 feared dead as Russian plane crashes near Moscow - VIDEO 
A Russian plane crashed in the outskirts of Moscow on Sunday after vanishing from radars, killing all 71 people on board, The Telegraph reported. 

The  Saratov Airlines An-148 jet, was en route to the city of Orsk when it vanished from radar and plunged into a field. 

"The plane crashed near the village of Argunovo. Passengers as well as the crew could hardly survive," a Russian emergency services source told local media. 

 

Eyewitnesses in Argunovo said they saw a burning plane falling from the sky, while rescue workers were unable to reach the crash site by road and had to approach on foot.  

Video footage obtained by Russian media showed plane debris scattered across a snow-covered field. 

Russian news agencies quoted official sources saying that no one had survived the crash of the Saratov Airlines flight.

Flight records showed that 25 minutes after takeoff the plane suddenly plunged to the ground from a height of 6,000 feet, crashing in rural area in the Moscow region.

Interfax news agency reported that technical fault was the leading suspected cause of the crash, but said the black boxes had not been recovered yet.

The temperature was -5C with light snow near Domodedovo airport on Sunday afternoon, which is not extreme or challenging weather for this time of year. A meteorologist told state television channel Rossiya 24 that there had not been particularly strong or suddenly changing winds.

“Meteorological conditions probably couldn't have directly or indirectly affected the development of the catastrophic situation,” said Yevgeny Tishkovets.


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