Dozens of people, including at least two children, were killed when a Russian passenger jet crash-landed at a Moscow airport, bursting into flames on impact and bouncing down the runway.
Forty-one people died when Aeroflot plane made the emergency landing Sunday at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, said Elena Markovskaya, a member of the country's Investigative Committee. An American citizen was also killed in the crash, Russian news agency Interfax reported.
Initial reports said the Aeroflot Superjet 100 was flying from Moscow to Murmansk, a Russian city in the Arctic circle, when an emergency on board forced it to turn back.
Video of the incident showed the plane skidding down the airport's runway, its rear section ablaze and spilling thick, black smoke. Once the plane had come to a halt, passengers used the plane's emergency slides from its two forward doors to exit the plane, before running away from the burning aircraft.
Of the 78 people aboard the plane, including five crew members, thirty-seven people survived, Markovskaya told reporters at Sheremetyevo Airport. Five survivors are hospitalized, she said.
Aeroflot Flight SU1492 returned to the capital's international airport, making a hard landing, Interfax reported. Interfax later said a "loss of communication" caused by a "lightning strike" forced the plane to return to Sheremetyevo.