A passenger jet slammed into the ground and caught fire while trying to land on a foggy night in northwestern Russia, killing 44 people and leaving eight survivors badly hurt, officials said on Tuesday. The Tupolev-134, with 43 passengers and nine crew, crashed on a roadside 2,300 feet short of the runway at the Besovets airport outside the northern city of Petrozavodsk at 11:40pm local time (1940 GMT) on Monday.
“The preliminary information is that 44 people were killed,” Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andriyanova said. “Eight people were injured and seven of them are in a very serious condition.”
