Newsday

Cargo Plane Crash Lands in Russia

MOSCOW (AP) -- A Ukrainian cargo plane on a test flight with 33 people aboard crashed Saturday seconds after taking off from a Siberian airport in Russia, emergency officials said. Four people were injured in the crash landing.

The An-70 was flying from Kiev, Ukraine, to Yakutsk in Siberia and had made a planned landing at the airport in Omsk, 1,400 miles east of Moscow. Two of the plane's four turbo-prop engines failed after it took off for Yakutsk, said Nikolai Bobr of the Emergency Situations Ministry.

Four of the 11 crew members and 22 engineers aboard were injured, two critically, when the plane slammed into the ground near the end of the runway and broke apart, Bobr said.

The Ukrainian-built An-70, a short take off and landing aircraft, was being tested for cold-weather flight.

AP-NY-01-27-01 0214EST< 

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), January 27, 2001