Russian Aeroflot Plane Crashes!

MOSCOW - A Russian Boeing 737-500 airliner crashed near the Ural mountains on Sunday, killing all 88 passengers and crew on board -- 21 of them foreign nationals.

The plane, operated by Russia's national airline Aeroflot and on an internal flight from Moscow, ploughed into wasteland while trying to land in the Siberian city of Perm.

Debris from the crash covered a section of Russia's main east-west railway, forcing its closure, Russian media reported. Television pictures showed firefighters walking round the smoldering, shattered remains of the plane.

Investigators were flying from Moscow to try and establish what caused the crash but there was no suggestion of an attack or sabotage.

"There were 88 people on board, 82 passengers and six crew," said Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova.

"All of them died. There were no casualties on the ground."

Aeroflot said 21 foreign nationals were among those killed -- nine from Azerbaijan, five from Ukraine and one person each from France, Switzerland, Latvia, the United States, Germany, Turkey and Italy. Seven children died in the crash.

Contact with the airliner was lost when it was at an altitude of 1,100 meters (3,600 ft) while descending to land, said an Aeroflot spokeswoman.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was briefed about the crash by Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu, news agencies quoted the Kremlin press service as saying.

The crash was the worst involving a Russian airliner since at least 170 people were killed in August 2006 when a Pulkovo Airlines TU-154 plane crashed in Ukraine on a flight from the Black Sea resort of Anapa to St Petersburg.

Aeroflot, a debt-ridden airline in the 1990s when it had a fleet of mainly Soviet-built planes, has transformed itself into an image conscious, profit-making company with global ambitions.

The last Aeroflot plane crash occurred in March 1994 in Siberia when 70 people were killed. Investigators blamed the pilot's teenage son for accidentally switching off the autopilot.

Last month, at least 65 people were killed when a Boeing 737-200 crashed in Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian country that was once part of the Soviet Union.