Russian teams of emergency workers and investigators searched a snow-covered field outside Moscow Monday, looking for body fragments and clues after a plane crashed a day earlier, killing all 71 people on board, including the crew and three children.
The 65 passengers on board were from 5 to 79-years-old, according to a list posted by the Russian Emergencies Ministry, which did not give their nationalities.
More than 400 people and 70 vehicles were deployed to the crash site, the ministry said.
WATCH: Crash
President Vladimir Putin ordered a special commission to investigate what caused the Antonov AN-148 plane to go down shortly after taking off.
Human error, technical failure and weather conditions are among the several possible cause, according to Russia’s Investigative Committee, which did not mention the possibility of terrorism.
The regional jet, operated by Saratov Airlines, was traveling from Domodedovo airport, to the city of Orsk in the Orenburg region when it crashed near Argunovo, about 80 kilometers southeast of Moscow.
The seven-year-old plane disappeared from the radar just minutes after departing from the capital city’s second busiest airport and was falling up to 6,700 meters per minute in the last seconds of the crash, flight-tracking site FlightRadar24 reported.
Russian media reported that search crews had found one flight recorder but it is not clear if it is the data or voice recorder.
Putin offered “his profound condolences to those who lost their relatives in the crash,” according to his spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
U.S. President Donald Trump joined world leaders in offering condolences to Putin and the Russian people. “The United States is deeply saddened by the tragic deaths of those on board Saratov Airlines Flight 703. We send our condolences to the families of those who lost their lives and to the people of Russia,” a statement released by the White House said.
The Domodedovo airport has been the focus of security concerns in the past. It came under sharp criticism in 2004, after Chechen suicide bombers destroyed two airliners that took off from the airport on the same evening, killing a total of 90 people. A 2011 bombing in the arrivals area killed 37 people.
Shabby equipment and poor supervision plagued Russian civil aviation for years after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, but the safety record has improved in recent years.
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