113 killed as Armenian jet crashes into Black Sea

MOSCOW - All 113 passengers and crew on board an Armenian airliner were killed yesterday when the plane crashed into the Black Sea off the Russian coast in heavy rain, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said.

Investigators blamed the bad weather. The Airbus A-320 had been trying to land at Sochi, a popular holiday spot in southern Russia. Justice officials said they had no reason to suspect a bomb.

The Emergencies Ministry said rescue workers had found baggage, life jackets, pieces of wreckage and a patch of oil floating on the surface of the sea at the crash site.

At least 39 bodies had been retrieved from the water last night, along with dozens of body parts.

"According to preliminary information, all people on board are dead," a ministry spokeswoman said.

The plane, operated by Armavia, had been making a short flight of about an hour from the Armenian capital Yerevan. Most of the passengers were Armenian nationals.

Some passengers' relatives, hoping to collect the victims' bodies and bring them home, travelled to Sochi on board a special flight from Yerevan organised by the airline.

In the terminal at Yerevan's Zvartnots airport, airline officials posted a list of the dead on a noticeboard. Women who had lost relatives wept and cried out in grief.

Russian television showed footage of small boats returning to shore with debris that they had picked up from the crash scene. Rescuers in diving gear were shown preparing themselves to enter the water to conduct searches.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said 26 of the passengers were Russian passport holders and almost all the rest were Armenians. The plane was carrying at least five children.

"I was waiting for a call from my mother that she had arrived okay. But she didn't phone, so I phoned myself and heard that this accident had happened," said Khapet Tadevosyan, 32, at Yerevan airport.

"She flew to Sochi to see her sisters, whom she hadn't seen for 15 years," he said.

A spokesman for Russia's Emergencies Ministry said the plane had vanished from radar screens near Sochi, which lies close to the Georgian border.

"At the moment, we have absolutely no evidence pointing to the possibility of a terrorist act on the plane," Deputy General Prosecutor Nikolai Shepel told Interfax news agency.

An Armavia official said the aircraft had initially been refused permission to land because of torrential rain, but the airport officials changed their minds.

The crash happened as the crew made a second approach.

"Our initial information is that the only cause was the weather, for example poor visibility," said Gayane Davtsian, a spokeswoman for Armenia's state aviation authority.

A day of mourning was declared in Armenia, a mountainous state of 3 million people, many of whom have relatives in southern Russia. Television stations cleared their schedules and were playing sombre music.

Airbus said it would be sending six specialists to help authorities with the crash investigation.

Attempts to pin down the cause of the crash were hampered by rain and the fact that most of the plane had sunk to the seabed. "The main parts of the plane are located at a depth of around 400 metres," Beltsov said.

The Airbus A-320, a twin-engined aircraft that seats 150 passengers, entered service in 1988.

- REUTERS