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Crash kills elite Russian hockey team

Xinhua, September 8, 2011

• A YAK-42 passenger plane carrying 45 people crashed Wednesday after taking off near central Russian city of Yaroslavl, killing at least 43 people aboard, said the Emergency Situations Ministry.

  Still image from TV shows the site of a plane crash in Yaroslavl, Russia, Sept. 7, 2011. A YAK-42 passenger plane carrying 45 people crashed Wednesday after taking off near central Russian city of Yaroslavl, killing at least 43 people aboard, said the Emergency Situations Ministry. [Xinhua]

  According to the ministry, the aircraft, with the Lokomotiv hockey team of Yaroslavl aboard to a match in Minsk, went down at 16:05 Moscow time (1200 GMT) in Tunoshna airport.

  Those aboard included 37 passengers and 8 crew members, it said, adding that rescuers have already found 26 bodies at the crash site and both the injured were in serious conditions.

  Sources in Russia's federal aviation agency Rosaviatsiya told reporters that preliminary information showed that the plane had failed to climb and hit a beacon's antenna outside the runway.

  So far, the cause of the crash was unclear. But Interfax quoted a source at the local airport as saying that there were two possible causes of the crash: equipment failures and the human factor.

  The crashed plane belongs to Yak-Service airlines. Local reports said the plane has been put into operation since 1993, and its certificate of airworthiness will expire on Oct. 1, 2011.

  A Kremlin spokesperson said President Dmitry Medvedev, who happens to be attending an international forum at a nearby place, will pay a visit to the crash site, where he will be joined by Transport Minister Igor Levitin who is going there under an order from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

  The rescue works and investigations have already started.

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