LONDON — All 71 people aboard a passenger plane that crashed shortly after leaving a Moscow airport Sunday are believed to have died, according to Russian media.
Russian news agency TASS cited an emergency services source saying that all 65 passengers and six crew members were killed in the incident. NBC News was unable to immediately verify the reports.
The Saratov Airlines flight was heading from Moscow to the city of Orsk near the Kazakhstan border before plummeting to the ground outside the capital, state media said.
TASS News agency said plane fragments were found in the Ramenskoye area around 25 miles from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport.
Footage and stills from news agencies showed fragments strewn across a snowy field with no buildings nearby.
The Saratov Airlines flight #6W703 crashed around five minutes after take off and was falling with up to 22,000 feet per minute, according to Flightradar24, which tracks airplane traffic across the globe.
The tracking service said the flight involved a seven-year-old Antonov An-148 aircraft.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said all possible causes for the crash were being looked into.
Shabby equipment and poor supervision had plagued Russian civil aviation for years after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, but its safety record has improved markedly in recent years.
The last large-scale crash in Russia occurred on Dec. 25, 2016, when a Tu-154 operated by the Russian Defense Ministry on its way to Syria crashed into the Black Sea minutes after takeoff from the southern Russian city of Sochi. All 92 people on board were killed.
In March 2016, a Boeing 737-800 flown by FlyDubai crashed while landing at Rostov-on-Don, killing all 62 people aboard.
An onboard bomb destroyed a Russian Metrojet airliner soon after taking off from Egypt’s Sharm al-Sheikh resort, killing 244 people in October 2015.
This story is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.