At least 83 dead in crash of Russian military plane in Georgia

Rescuers reaching the crash site about 25 kilometers (15 miles) east of Batumi found pieces of the plane and scorched earth. Kakha Beridze, an officer from the Georgian Ministry of Emergency Situations, arrived at the crash site about three hours after the crash with four other workers.

"Rain was falling, the plane was in pieces, and everything was on fire," Beridze said. "There was no one to save, they were all dead." Alexander Drobyshevsky, an Air Force spokesman in Moscow, said that at least 72 passengers and 11 crew members were aboard the plane, and that all were presumed dead. However, he said that there were discrepancies between the passenger manifest and the list of people who had cleared customs in Moscow, so there could have been more people on board. The flight was carrying Russian servicemen and their families. Russian media reported that eight children, including a nine-month-old child, were among the passengers. The cause of the crash was not immediately known. But Drobyshevsky said the plane had "violated the flight altitude." The plane veered off course on approach in "difficult weather conditions," said Alexander Silagadze, head of the civil aviation agency Sakaeronavigatsiya.

An unidentified witness told Russia's ORT television that the plane had been in flames before hitting the mountain, called Tirina, or Wailing Mountain. After the crash, three explosions could be heard, witnesses told The Associated Press. Russian military officials said the plane, an Il-18 transport, was at an altitude of 1,600 meters (5,300 feet) when communications with it were lost, the Interfax news agency reported. It crashed 1,300 meters (4,265 feet) up the mountain, Georgian Emergency Situations Ministry officials said. Police and military cordoned off a large section of the mountain and prevented anyone other than emergency workers from approaching. Rescue workers said on Thursday morning that they had found fragments of just three bodies. Although Georgia became an independent country after the 1991 Soviet collapse, Russia still maintains military bases there. Russia is in the process of removing its troops and equipment from two bases in Georgia, and is negotiating withdrawal from two more. Equipment from the bases is being shipped through Batumi. Il-18 planes, which can seat up to 100, first flew in 1957, and production ceased in 1970. The planes were used by the Russian military as a submarine hunter and airborne command post, and as a passenger plane by the Soviet national airline Aeroflot.

(sda)