27 Feared Killed in Russia Air Crash

Rescuers recovered flight recorders and the scattered remains of some of the 27 people feared killed when a plane plowed into snowy woods north of Moscow, the Emergencies Ministry said Tuesday.

The aging Ilyushin-18 airplane crashed Monday night near the town of Kalyazin, 90 miles north of the Russian capital. It had taken off from the Siberian city of Khatanga en route to Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport.

The plane carried nine crew members and 18 passengers, including businesspeople, geologists and three Ukrainian construction workers who had been building a church in Khatanga, RTR state television and Itar-Tass reported.

The cause of the crash was unknown. Russian news agencies said there was no evidence that the crash was the result of an attack.

Search teams trawled through an icy clearing littered with twisted metal fragments, shreds of clothing and luggage. The burned-out hulk of the plane stuck out of the snow.

Rescue workers dragged black body bags across the area on sleighs, past a wooden summer cottage destroyed by debris from the crash.

An Emergencies Ministry spokesman at the scene said only one body had been identified. “So far we have identified one woman, by the ring on her finger,” he said.

The plane clipped treetops and summer homes in the forest before crashing in an area dotted with villages. But the official said there were no casualties on the ground.

Alexander Anikin, prosecutor for the Tver region, said specialists would examine the plane’s flight recorders.

The plane, chartered by a Khatanga entrepreneur, belonged to Irs-Aero airline company.

The turboprop Ilyushin-18, with a capacity of 120 passengers, was long a workhorse of Soviet air travel.

The last major accident involving the craft killed more than 80 Russian servicemen and their families in the republic of Georgia in October 2000, when the plane hit a mountain during a heavy rainstorm.