Investigators Look Into Cause of Russian Plane CrashA governmental investigation commission said Saturday it had reached an unanimous decision on causes for an air crash on Tuesday that claimed 145 lives.However, the commission rejected to disclose its conclusions until early next week. The head of the commission, Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, told Russia's ORT television that the commission had prepared a report on what he described as unanimous but unconfirmed conclusions about the crash of the Tupolev Tu-154 near Irkutsk, Siberia. Klebanov said he will make the conclusions public early next week, before which he will report to the President and the Prime Minister. The 15-year-old plane, belonging to the Vladivostokavia airline, plunged on Tuesday night onto the field while circling for a scheduled landing in Irkutsk, which was half way through a flight from the Ural city Yekaterinburg to Vladivostok on Russia's Pacific coast. All 145 people on board, including 12 Chinese citizens and six children were killed in the worst civil air disaster for years in Russia. Earlier Interfax report said human error was the most probable explanation for the crash, as preliminary examination of the " black boxes" suggested that all the engines and basic systems of the plane were operating properly until the crash. The flight data recorders were then sent to Moscow on Friday morning for a more thorough decoding. The identification work of the remains of the victims continues. The bodies of 61 passengers had been sent to Yekaterinburg, and 26 brought to Vladivostok. A regional official said all the remains are not likely to be identified because only fragments were left in some cases. |
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