Engine failure cited in Russian plane crash

PERM, Russia — A Russian passenger plane that caught fire as it fell from the sky on Sunday likely had engine failure before it crashed, killing all 88 people on board, investigators said.

The right engine of the Boeing 737-500 caught fire as it prepared to land in Perm, they said. The plane came down on the outskirts of the city, hitting the ground just a few hundred yards from small wooden houses and apartment buildings. Officials said no one on the ground was killed.

Flight 821, operated by an Aeroflot subsidiary, carried 82 passengers, including six children under 10, and six crew members, Aeroflot said.

The head of the Investigative Committee said examination of the site showed the crash "apparently was connected to technical failure and a fire in the right engine," the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

The plane's flight recorders have been found, and officials said it will take three to four weeks to analyze them.

No problems were reported with the 15-year-old jet when it was last inspected at the beginning of 2008, Aeroflot deputy director Lev Koshlyakov said.

Among those killed was Gennady Troshev, 61, who commanded troops in Chechnya. He had been accused of tolerating rampant abuses in the war-ravaged republic.

Citizens of Azerbaijan, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and the U.S. were among those killed, the airline said. The U.S. Embassy said the man listed as an American is not a U.S citizen and no Americans appeared to have been on the flight.

The crash was the second involving a Boeing 737 in the former Soviet Union in the past month. A plane flying from Kyrgyzstan to Iran crashed Aug. 24, killing 64 of 90 people.