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Russian jet crashes in heavy fog, killing at least six people

A Russian airliner attempting to land in heavy fog in the central Russian city of Samara came down short of the runway, scraped along the landing strip and overturned. At least six people died and at least 26 were injured, authorities and company officials said.

Prosecutors investigating the incident said they were considering bad weather and pilot error among the most likely causes of Saturday's crash.

The plane was a Tu-134 passenger jet belonging to the Russian airline UTAir, and the accident was sure to renew concerns about the aging plane model that is the workhorse of the Russian civil aviation industry and that transport officials had ordered gradually phased out. Experts say the jets are harder to land than modern aircraft, especially in bad weather.

The plane, carrying 50 passengers and seven crew, had been en route from the Siberian city of Surgut to the western city of Belgorod with a stop in Samara, a city on the Volga river, about 900km southeast of Moscow.

The Emergency Situations Ministry posted on its Web site a list of six people who died and 26 who were hospitalized with injuries. Prosecutors put the number of wounded at 31. Earlier officials had put the death toll at seven and said 51 people had been injured, but they later revised the figures, explaining that the others were being treated for psychological shock.

Photos showed the plane's wrecked fuselage lying on thick snow several meters from the landing strip, its wings, tail and engine scattered about as rescuers worked to evacuate surviving victims and bodies of the dead and police searched for clues to the crash.

Yuri Naryshkin, spokesman for regional emergency authorities told NTV television the plane touched down before the landing strip, then plowed through the runway and overturned.

Earlier a local emergency official had said the plane landed on its fuselage after the landing gear failed to come down, according to Russian media reports.

Prosecutors probing the crash said in an official statement the plane touched down about 400m short of the landing strip. Regional prosecutor Alexei Kopylov told NTV television pilot error and bad weather were regarded as the primary causes of the crash.

The Rossiya television channel cited UTAir officials as saying that the plane had been in good condition and was flown by an experienced pilot. A company spokeswoman reached by the press declined to provide any details about the plane's condition and age or the crew's experience.
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