Moscow Plane catches fire, 41 killed
41 people were killed after an Russian passenger plane en route from Moscow to Murmansk caught fire before an emergency landing Sunday.
News Desk
Forty-one people are believed to be dead as the Russian passenger plane made an emergency landing at Moscow’s busiest airport and caught fire.
Several passengers onboard the plane escaped through the plane’s emergency slides that inflated after emergency landing went haywire.
The plane was flying from Moscow to northern Russian city of Murmansk. A spokeswoman confirmed the death toll was 41. Another 11 people were injured, Dmitry Matveyev, the Moscow region’s health minister said.
No official cause has been given for the disaster as yet.
The Investigative Committee said it had opened an investigation and was looking into whether the pilots had breached air safety rules.
President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev expressed their condolences and ordered investigators to establish what had happened.
The Sukhoi Superjet-100 was the first civilian aircraft developed in the country’s post-Soviet era.
