75 Aboard Die as Russian Jetliner Crashes in Siberia

A Russian jetliner crashed in a remote forest in Siberia today, killing all 75 people on board.

The state Emergency Committee said the Aeroflot Airbus A-310 apparently exploded and burned after crashing in the Kemerovo region. The 63 passengers on the plane included 23 foreigners, mainly from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Britain.

Efforts to reach the plane were hampered for several hours as rescue workers forced their way through snowbanks up to three yards deep to reach the area, officials said.

A resident from a nearby village saw the plane burning in the forest and notified authorities, officials said. A helicopter later spotted the crashed jetliner, and rescue workers and police reached the site several hours later.

The plane was four hours into a 10-hour flight from Moscow to Hong Kong when it went down, said Vassili Tkachenko, Aeroflot’s general manager in Hong Kong.

The 183-seat plane disappeared from radar without sending a distress signal, he said. But because air traffic controllers saw it vanish from the screen, they were able to pinpoint its location, he said.

The jet had left Moscow with 63 passengers and 12 crew, he said.

Tkachenko said the plane was only 2 years old.

Aeroflot official Vladimir Soukhov in Tokyo said the downed plane was about 150 miles from Novokuznetsk, a town about 2,000 miles east of Moscow.