Plane carrying 43 passengers crashes in Siberia

Dozerns are killed when a twin-engine turboprop crashes shortly after taking off near Tyumen, Siberia. Msnbc.com's Dara Brown reports. ?

By NBC News, msnbc.com staff and news services

Updated at 8:24 a.m. ET: MOSCOW -- Thirty-two people were killed?but 11?were rescued alive from a plane crash in Siberia, Russia,?an official reportedly said Monday.

The ATR 72, a twin-engine, turbo-prop plane, with 43 people aboard, crashed some 18 to 22 miles from the western Siberian city of Tyumen, Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said.

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The mid-range plane belonging to Russian airline UTair crashed after taking off from Tyumen on a flight to Surgut, an oil town further north in Siberia.

There were 39 passengers and four crew on board, according to preliminary information, Andrianova said.

Marat Gubaydullin / AP

Russian Emergency Ministry rescuers search the site of the ATR-72 plane crash outside Tyumen, Russia, Monday.

"Eleven people were injured and 32 killed," the Tyumen emergencies ministry said in a statement, according to the AFP news agency.

In a statement, UTair, a?private Russian company, said the flight?plane?crashed "while conducting a forced landing" about a mile from?another airport, Roschino, according to AFP.

Cabin on fire
The news agency said the plane's cabin was on fire when rescuers arrrived. The cause of the crash was not immediately known, Russian news agencies reported.

Injured survivors were flown to hospital by helicopter. At least five survivors were in critical condition, state-run RIA news agency reported, citing hospital officials in Tyumen, some 1,070 miles east of Moscow.

UTair has three ATR-72 craft made by the French-Italian manufacturer ATR, according to the airline's website.

Russian news agency RIA Novosti published what it said were images of the crash scene.

ATR is an equal partnership between two major European aeronautics players, Alenia Aermacchi, a Finmeccanica company, and EADS.

The crash was the deadliest air disaster in Russia since a Yak-42 plane crashed into a riverbank near the city of Yaroslavl after takeoff on September 7, 2011, killing 44 people and wiping out the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey team.

President Dmitry Medvedev called for a reduction in the number of Russian airlines and improvements in crew training after that crash, which followed a June crash that killed 47 people including a navigator who had been drinking.

A statement from ATR? confirmed the fatalities, adding: "The aircraft, registered under VP-BYZ, was MSN (Manufacturing Serial Number) 332, initially delivered from the production line in October 1992. UTair had been operating this aircraft since August 2008."

It said the Russian Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) would lead the investigation and provide official information, and expressed its "deepest sympathy" to the victims and their families and friends.

Reuters and NBC News producer Jay Blackman contributed to this report.

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