Two Chinese are feared dead and one escaped with minor injuries when a Russian airliner crashed on landing and burst into flames in Siberia yesterday, killing at least 122 people and injuring more than 50.

Tu Er'xun, an official with the Chinese Consulate General in Khabarovsk, said that of the three Chinese on the plane the fate of two was not known while one man escaped with slight injuries.

The survivor Wang Tiecheng from North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region said the other two Chinese on board, both women, had probably died. They were reported to be making a stopover in Irkutsk en route to Shenyang, capital of Northeast China's Liaoning Province.

But Sibir airline said three Chinese were among five foreigners killed, the other two being an Azeri and a German. No other details were available except that seven foreign nationals were being treated.

Many of the 200 people on board were children flying for holidays to Lake Baikal, a popular Siberian spot in summer, media reported.

At least 122 bodies had been recovered and 53 people were in hospital being treated for burns, trauma and the effects of smoke inhalation, an Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman said. The fate of 25 passengers was unknown.

"It was awful. I saw people burning, they were burning," Margarita Svetlova, who survived the crash, told Russia's First Channel television.

"I probably lost consciousness for a minute ... I unfastened my seat belt. I ran and started shouting and swearing, looking for an exit ... The inflatable escape chute wouldn't inflate, but I jumped all the same. I was lucky, I just hurt my leg a bit."

Sibir airlines flight 778 from Moscow to Irkutsk, an Airbus A-310, overshot the runway at around 2:50 am Moscow time (2250 GMT on Saturday). It ploughed through a wall into nearby buildings and caught fire.

The only surviving stewardess opened an emergency exit, enabling passengers in the rear of the plane to jump to safety. Of the eight-strong crew, a pilot also survived.

Some 600 rescue workers used cutting gear to recover bodies after taking two hours to douse the burning fuselage.

President Vladimir Putin called a day of mourning today.

TV pictures showed the smoking wreckage of the plane in between several lockup garages. Only its tail section, bearing the white-on-blue logo of Sibir airlines, was still intact.

At Moscow's Domodedovo airport, where flight 778 took off on Saturday evening, friends and relatives sought news of their loved ones at an information centre.

One man, called Vyacheslav, lost his brother, sister-in-law and their 4-year-old child in the crash, his friend Larisa Kolcheva said. "We were sitting with them yesterday before they got on the flight," she said. "I just can't believe this has happened."

Prosecutors opened a criminal probe into the crash, with human error and equipment failure considered among the possible causes. There was no immediate suspicion of foul play.

Preliminary investigations showed that a faulty braking system could have caused the accident, Russian media reported.

Transport Minister Igor Levitin said the plane's pilots had told air traffic controllers they had landed successfully but then radio contact broke off suddenly, news agencies reported. Levitin also said the runway in Irkutsk was wet after rain.

Airbus said the crashed plane, assembled in 1987, had made more than 10,000 flights.

(China Daily July 10, 2006)