All 169 people aboard a Russian airliner were killed on Tuesday, when the jet crashed near the city of Donetsk in east Ukraine after it ran into severe weather, said the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry.

Preliminary information showed that all 159 passengers and 10 crew members aboard the plane were killed, including a dozen young children and an unidentified number of foreigners, the ministry said.

Earlier reports said that 160 passengers and 10 crew members were on board.

"Nobody survived," spokeswoman for the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry Irina Andrianova said.

"At 3:37 p.m. Moscow time (1137 GMT), the plane sent an SOS signal and at 3:39 it disappeared from radar screens," Andrianova said.

The airliner, a Tu-154 jet owned by Russia's Pulkovo Airlines, was flying from the southern Russian Black Sea coastal city of Anapa to St. Petersburg when it crashed, 45 km north of Donetsk.

The cause of the crash was under investigation, but officials in both Russia and Ukraine indicated that bad weather conditions, not terrorism, was likely responsible for the tragedy.

The crash "was not a terrorist attack," said Leonid Belyayev, acting director of Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry, in St. Petersburg.

According to initial information, the airplane crashed after it entered a zone of severe turbulence, head of the Russian Federal Air Navigation Service, Alexander Neradko said.

"The catastrophe occurred as the result of a lightning strike as the plane flew into a storm front," Andrianova was cited by the Interfax news agency as saying.

Meanwhile, Interfax Ukraine, reported that a fire had broken out on board the plane, shortly before it crashed.

A fire flared up inside the aircraft as it was flying at an altitude of 10,000 meters, spokesman for the Ukrainian Emergency Situations Ministry,Igor Krol, was quoted by Interfax Ukraine as saying.

The crew tried to make an emergency landing but failed due to the malfunction of the plane's landing gear, and the jet crashed "on its belly," said Krol .

Ukrainian rescuers have reached the crash site.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko promised to cooperate fully with Russia in investigating the cause of the crash and repatriating the victims' bodies. He declared Wednesday a national day of mourning.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, on his part, has asked Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov to form an investigation team, to find out the cause of the tragedy and declared a day of mourning for the victims' to be held on Thursday in his country.

A Pulkovo Airlines executive said that a special flight would leave St. Petersburg on Wednesday morning to fly relatives to Donetsk, the nearest city to the crash site. Once there, they are expected to try and identify the bodies of the deceased.

The crash was the second major incident involving Russia's aviation industry in the last two months. On July 9, an Airbus A-310 of the Russian Airline S7, skidded off a runaway and burst into flames in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, killing more than 120 people.

(Xinhua News Agency August 23, 2006)