00:00Russian rescuers have found the burning fuselage of a passenger plane which earlier lost contact with air traffic controllers.
00:06The aircraft, an AN-24, which is operated by Angara Airlines, was heading towards the small town of Tinda in a region which borders China in Russia's Far East.
00:15The region's governor has said that 49 crew and passengers were on board, including several children.
00:21The flight is thought to have been just a few kilometres away from its destination when contact was lost.
00:26With our reporter Olga Malchewska joins me now in the studio.
00:30So this has been, this is quite a new story. Tell us what you've been able to glean, more details.
00:34Well, Russian media are publishing different numbers of people on board, but as we heard from the governor of that region, of Amurskaya Oblast, Vasily Orlov,
00:43he says that there were 49 people on board, according to what is known so far.
00:4943 of them were passengers, including children, and six crew members.
00:54Now, what is known as well is that the crew members were the local staff from the border region, Irkutskaya Oblast, the region of Irkutsk.
01:03What we don't know is what became the reason of the incident, and the Russian authorities are saying that they have deployed a rescue mission to the place.
01:12They sent the Mi-8 helicopter, and that helicopter managed to locate the parts of the plane.
01:19We have been seeing video on social media, but we are still trying to verify it with our colleagues, with the BBC Verify,
01:27and the video shows smoke, it shows parts of the plane in the area covered with forest.
01:33Local authorities say that it's an area which is difficult to reach, so it might take around an hour for the rescue workers to reach to the ground.
01:41And they are trying to check whether there was a chance for anyone to survive.
01:46Now, what we don't know is what happened before, and according to the local authorities,
01:51there were no technical issues before the plane took off from Blagoveshensk.
01:55So, as you mentioned, it's going to be tricky, because it's taken a while to get there, to start finding out that sort of information.
01:59What are passengers, people who have been on it, is there any information being given out to relatives who might have people who have gone missing on the plane?
02:08Well, local authorities have opened a hotline to anyone who knows anything about this incident, and obviously to the relatives.
02:17But there is no information published so far, and they ask people not to make any speculations.
02:22Obviously, we will try to see how the story develops.
02:25And what is known is that the plane had disappeared from radars shortly after taking off from the city of Blagoveshensk.
02:32The plane was on the route from Khabarovsk, which is a big regional centre in Russia, and it was heading through Blagoveshensk to Tynda.
02:40Now, it was found around 15 kilometres from the town of Tynda, in the area covered with mountains and forests.
02:47Olga Belchevska, thank you very much indeed for that update.
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