BATUMI, Georgia (AP) — At least 86 people were killed when a Russian military plane crashed into a mountain in western Georgia, Russian military officials said Thursday.
The Defense Ministry plane was en route from the Chkalovsky military airfield near Moscow and was attempting to land in harsh weather at a Russian military base near Georgia's Black Sea port of Batumi when it crashed on Wednesday night.
Rescuers reaching the crash site about 15 miles east of Batumi found pieces of the plane and scorched earth. Rescuers on Thursday recovered the plane's black box, or flight recorder, the Interfax news agency reported, but had not yet determined the cause of the crash.
"Rain was falling, the plane was in pieces, and everything was on fire," said officer Kakha Beridze of the Georgian Ministry of Emergency Situations, whose team arrived about three hours after the crash. "There was no one to save; they were all dead."
Alexander Drobyshevsky, an air force spokesman in Moscow, said that at least 72 passengers and 11 crew members were aboard, and that all were presumed dead. However, he said that there were discrepancies between the passenger manifest and the list of people who had cleared customs in Moscow, so there could have been more people on board.
The flight was carrying Russian servicemen and their families. Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze's spokesman, Kakha Imnadze, said that seven children were on board, including a 9-month-old infant. Russian media reported eight children aboard.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known. Drobyshevsky said the plane had "violated the flight altitude." And the head of the Georgian civil aviation agency, Alexander Silagadze, said that the plane had veered off course on approach in "difficult weather conditions."
Another official from the Georgian agency, Zurab Chankotadze, told The Associated Press that the radar tracking the plane had shown that the pilot did not make the final turn necessary for approaching the landing strip.
"It is so far hard to say whether it was a mistake by the pilot or navigator, or whether the cause was difficult weather conditions," Chankotadze said.
A witness told Russia's ORT television that the plane had been in flames before hitting the mountain. After the crash, three explosions could be heard, witnesses told AP.
Russian military officials said the plane, an Il-18 transport, was at an altitude of 5,300 feet when communications with it were lost, the Interfax news agency reported. It crashed 4,265 feet up the mountain, Georgian Emergency Situations Ministry officials said.
Rescue workers said Thursday morning that they had found fragments of just three bodies, but that many more could be scattered over a wide area.
Shevardnadze arrived in Batumi about midday Thursday. He had spoken by telephone with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, and the two agreed to launch a joint investigation, Imnadze.
Although Georgia became an independent country after the 1991 Soviet collapse, Russia still maintains military bases there.
Russia is in the process of removing its troops and equipment from two bases in Georgia, and is negotiating withdrawal from two more. Equipment from the bases is being shipped through Batumi.
Il-18 planes, which can seat up to 100, first flew in 1957. Production ceased in 1970. The planes were used by the Russian military as a submarine hunter and airborne command post, and as a passenger plane by the Soviet national airline Aeroflot.