28 People Aboard Russian Plane Believed Dead After Crash
About 28 people aboard a plane coming in for a landing in bad weather Tuesday are believed to be dead after it disappeared from radar and crashed in Russia.
Officials from the Kamchatka region said the plane was on approach in fog and clouds, but it missed a scheduled communication and disappeared from the radar before crashing.
Russian media reports claim that none of the 22 passengers or six crew members aboard the flight survived the crash.
Wreckage of the Antonov An-26 was found near the airport, according to officials, but no bodies have been found yet and there has been no official confirmation of the deaths.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
Russia's state aviation agency, Rosaviatsiya, said that parts of the plane were found about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the airport's runway. Part of the fuselage was found on the side of a mountain, Russia's Pacific Fleet told news agencies, and another part was floating in the Okhotsk Sea.
Sergei Gorb, deputy director of Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise, said that the plane "practically crashed into a sea cliff," which wasn't supposed to be in its landing trajectory.
The aircraft was in operation since 1982, Russian state news agency Tass reported. The director of Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise, Alexei Khabarov, told the Interfax news agency that the plane was technically sound before taking off from the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.
The head of the local government in Palana, Olga Mokhireva, was among those on board, spokespeople of the Kamchatka government said.
A criminal investigation was opened, as is typical.
A search and rescue mission was underway in the Palana area, but the work was hindered in a complex mountain terrain. The governor of Kamchatka, Vladimir Solodov, said that the area where the wreckage was found was difficult to access, especially as night fell.
"Most likely, only tomorrow we will get official confirmation" of the fate of those aboard, Solodov was quoted by Interfax as saying.
In 2012, an Antonov An-28 plane belonging to Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise crashed into a mountain while flying the same route as Tuesday's flight. A total of 14 people were on board and 10 of them were killed. Both pilots, who were among the dead, were found to have alcohol in their blood, Tass reported.
