#Russia #BBCNews A plane, carrying 42 passengers and six crew, has crashed about 16km (10 miles) from its destination in the far-eastern Amur region of Russia.
Russian rescue services found the wreckage of the plane after reports that it had vanished from radar screens as it approached Tynda airport. No-one is thought to have survived, reports say.
Amur's regional governor Vasily Orlov said "all necessary resources" had been deployed to find the plane. Five children were among those on board, he added.
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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.
