After a plane crash in Russia, the first dead have been recovered. What was initially feared now seems a sad certainty: No passenger is likely to have survived.
Palana – After the crash of a Russian passenger plane on the Far Eastern Kamchatka peninsula, salvage forces recovered the first bodies. As the governor of Kamchatka, Vladimir Solodov, said on Wednesday, the victims were pulled out of the water.
Civil defense divers were also on duty. 28 people were on board the Antonov An-26 plane that crashed on Tuesday. The authorities assumed that no one survived the accident near the town of Palana in the northwest of the peninsula.
Russian television pictures showed a dark crash site on a cliff. Palana is located near the Shelikhov Bay of the Sea of Okhotsk. The plane took off from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the capital of the peninsula famous for its volcanoes. According to initial findings, it crashed on the approach to landing on Palana in bad weather and fog. The mountainous region, which is difficult to access, is around 700 kilometers north of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.
The exact cause of the accident was unclear. In addition to the weather conditions, investigators are investigating technical reasons or possible human error as the cause of the crash. The machine disappeared from the flight radar on Tuesday; Hours later, according to a report from the Russian Pacific Fleet, debris was found in the sea and on the steep coast.
A commission with the Russian Minister of Transport Vitaly Savelev also traveled to the site of the accident. Governor Solodov said that the flight recorders would be sought to solve the crash. He scheduled three days of mourning. The authorities promised the families of the killed 22 passengers and 6 crew members at least 3.5 million rubles (around 40,000 euros) in compensation. dpa
