Scores die in Russian plane crash

A Russian airliner that crashed near a city in the Urals, killing all 88 people on board, caught fire in mid-air, reports say. The Boeing-737-500, belonging to a branch of the national airline Aeroflot, was on a flight from Moscow to Perm, near the Ural mountains. Twenty-one foreign passengers were on board the Aeroflot Nord flight. Radio contact with the plane was lost as it was landing. One witness said it looked like a comet as it came down. "It looked like a... burning comet. It hit the ground opposite the next house, there was a blaze, like fireworks, it lit the whole sky, the blaze," the witness told Russian TV. The Boeing-737 had 82 passengers on board, including seven children, and six crew, Aeroflot said. Those killed include Gen Gennady Troshev, a former commander of Russian forces in Chechnya and military advisor to former Russian President Vladimir Putin.