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Rescuers find bodies of all victims of Boeing 737 crash in Kazan airport

The Investigations Committee will send a group of experienced investigators and criminologists from Moscow within a few hours

KAZAN, November 17, 21:39 /ITAR-TASS/. Rescuers have found the bodies of all the fifty people - forty-four passengers and six crewmembers - who died Sunday night when a Boeing 737 jet of the Tatarstan airline collapsed in Kazan airport in the last minutes of a flight from Moscow, officials at the Tatarstani regional center for disaster situations medicine said.

The jet crashed on the airport’s runway at 19:26 Moscow Standard Time, slightly more than an hour after takeoff from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport.

A spokesman woman for the airport told Itar-Tass it was closed for takeoffs and landings until 23:00 hours as a minimum while all the arriving flights were being diverted to other airports.

Russia’s Healthcare Ministry has dispatched a group of forensic experts for establishing the identities of the dead, the ministry press secretary Olegal Sagalai said.

“In line with an instruction from Healthcare Minister Veronika Skvortsova, forensic experts of the Russian Center for Forensic Studies, which reports to our ministry, have been dispatched to Kazan for rendering the assistance that might be needed by regional specialists,” he said.

The Investigations Committee will send a group of experienced investigators and criminologists from Moscow within a few hours, committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said. These experts have an extensive experience with investigating accidents of the same kind.

Alexander Bastrykin, the chairman of the Investigations Committee, is due to go to Kazan Monday, he said.

Markin confirmed that the fire resultant from the explosion of the jet’s fuel tanks had been extinguished and investigators had gotten down to inspecting the site of the crash.

“Investigators will probe into all the possible versions of the accident, including the pilots’ errors, equipment failures and an unfavorable weather status.