Russian plane crash kills 88

By Yevgeny Malychev

PERM, Russia (Reuters) - Engine failure caused an Aeroflot Boeing 737-500 plane crash in Russia on Sunday which killed all 88 people on board, officials said, dismissing fears terrorists had attacked the airliner.

The dead included 21 foreign nationals flying on the plane from Moscow to Perm in the Urals when it plunged into scrubland and railway on the edge of the city, narrowly missing houses.

Russian news agencies and television quoted eyewitnesses who said they saw an explosion before the plane fell to earth and wreckage was spread over a wide area fuelling speculation of a terrorist attack.

But Russian officials investigating the crash said a faulty engine had forced the plane to crash.

"We have no information that the aircraft exploded in mid-air," Interfax news agency quoted Russia's transport minister Igor Levitin as saying.

Alexander Bastrykin from the Russian Prosecutor-General's office investigating the crash blamed it on a technical fault, according to RIA Novosti news agency.

"Judging by inspections from the scene . . . the aircraft crash was connected to technical defects of the right engine," he said.

Fragments of debris covered a section of the Trans-Siberian railway, forcing trains to divert around the Perm area.