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Passengers and rescuers gather near the crashed Dagestan Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 plane Saturday at the Domodedovo airport outside of Moscow. Photo: AFP Two people died and dozens were injured Saturday when a Russian airliner overshot the runway while attempting an emergency landing at Mos-cow's Domodedovo airport, a Russian aviation official said. The Tupolev-154 plane, operated by Dagestan Airlines, took off from Vnukovo airport, another of Moscow's airports, but found itself in trouble nearly 30 minutes after takeoff when all three of its engines failed. "Two people were killed," said Sergei Izvolvsky, an official at Russia's state-owned aviation agency, adding that the flight had carried 163 passengers and nine crewmembers. Russian news agencies said the two dead were passengers. "The planes' three engines stopped working nearly 80 kilometers away from Domodedovo, and the navigation system failed. The reason for the failures is not yet known," Izvolvsky said. Timur Sikmatov, a spokesman at the transport ministry, announced that at least 87 passengers were hospitalized at various clinics near the airport. Pictures showed the aircraft broken into three pieces, having slid off the runway and crashed through trees. Passengers were seen emerging from the plane, which was surrounded by firefighters and medics. The airliner had been bound for Makhachkala, capital of the Russian province of Dagestan. The Tu-154 has been a mainstay of the Russian airliner fleet for years, and is the very type that crashed in April and killed Polish president Lech Kaczynski and some 90 others. Aging infrastructure has taken its toll on Russian aviation. A plane crash in Siberia in August killed 11. Russia's top criminal investigation agency announced it would investigate this latest incident for violations of transport safety rules, state-run news agency RIA reported. Reuters |
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