A Russian passenger jet mysteriously crashed and exploded, killing the more than 140 people aboard, as it tried to land at the Siberian city of Irkutsk last night, officials said.
“They all died,” emergency worker Edmund Musin said from Irkutsk, where the plane was to have landed about 9 p.m.
The pilot of the plane, a Tu-154 on its way from Yekaterinburg in the Urals to the Pacific port city of Vladivostok, aborted two attempts at landing at Irkutsk. During a third try, the plane disappeared off airport radar screens.
The country’s aging commercial air fleet last suffered a major crash in March 1997, when 50 people died when a charter flight to Turkey went down.