Tunoshna (Russia), Sept. 7 (Reuters): A passenger plane carrying a Russian ice hockey team to a season-opening match crashed after takeoff from a provincial airport today, killing 43 people and leaving two survivors in grave condition.
The crash of the Yak-42 aircraft , whose victims included foreign stars playing for the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) team Lokomotiv, plunged the sports world into grief. It is likely to increase concerns about Russian aviation safety less than three months after a crash that killed 45.
The Russian-made plane was carrying 37 passengers and eight crew to Minsk in Belarus when it crashed a few kilometers from the airport at Tunoshna outside Yaroslavl, 250km north of Moscow, the emergencies ministry said. “I heard a big bang and then a louder one 10 seconds later,” said Andrei Gorshkov, a 16-year-old Tunoshna resident. “Flames shot high and a column of black smoke rose into the air.”
He said he had seen the plane about 300 metres over the village, its nose pointing at a downward angle, then lost sight of it as it fell. When he ran to the site, he said: “The wheel assembly was burning, half the plane was in the water, seats were floating and two people lay dead.” Two people survived and were hospitalised, ministry official Sergei Miroshnichenko said.
The plane was carrying players, coaches and officials members of Lokomotiv, which is based in Yaroslavl, to a match in Minsk, KHL president Alexander Medvedev said in televised comments.
“There has been a terrible tragedy,” Medvedev said after the league’s opening match in the city of Ufa was interrupted by news of the crash, stunning spectators and sports officials. Three Czech world champions, a legendary Slovak player and Swedish goaltender Stefan Liv were killed.
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