MOSCOW: Search teams on Tuesday found wreckage of a passenger plane carrying 28 people that had disappeared in Russia’s remote far eastern Kamchatka peninsula, but there was little hope of survivors.
Search and rescue operations were suspended after night fell and Russian news agencies quoted local sources as saying it appeared that all the passengers and crew had died.
The An-26 plane was flying from Kamchatka’s main city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to the coastal town of Palana when it disappeared at 2:40 pm (0240 GMT).
The governor of Kamchatka, a vast peninsula popular with adventure tourists for its abundant wildlife and live volcanoes, said search teams had found parts of the fuselage along the coast and in the Okhotsk Sea.
“There was a catastrophe during the go-around approach for landing,” Vladimir Solodov said in a video released on the government website.
Russia’s aviation agency said in a statement that the plane’s debris had been found at 9:06 pm local time (0906 GMT).
Officials said that communication with the plane had been lost nine kilometres (5.5 miles) from Palana’s airport and 10 minutes before its scheduled landing time.
Russian news agencies quoted local officials as saying most of the passengers were from Palana — which has a population of about 3,000 — including four local government officials and the town’s head Olga Mokhiryova.

Philippine Military aircraft: It may be recalled that the Russian plane crashed a couple of days after the Philippine military crashed claiming 45. Ninety-two people, most of them army personnel, were on board the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft when the accident happened as it tried to land on Jolo island in Sulu province around midday, Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said in a statement. “So far 40 wounded and injured were rescued and 17 bodies recovered,” Lorenzana said. Photos taken by local media outlet Pondohan TV and posted on their Facebook page showed the wrecked body of the plane engulfed in flames. 

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