By Xinhua,
Almaty : At least 25 passengers survived the crash of a Boeing-737 passenger jet near Bishkek, capital of Central Asia’s Kyrgyzstan on Sunday, Kyrgyz Emergency Minister Kamchibek Tashiyev said.
“There were 90 people on board, 25 of them survived,” Tashiyev was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying, adding that the plane has burnt down completely.
The Kyrgyz Civil Aviation Department said earlier that there are 25 survivors in the air crash.
Two ambulance cars took to Bishkek the first nine victims of the crash and a headquarters has been set up to help victims, a spokesperson for the Kyrgyz Healthcare Ministry said.
According to the Kyrgyz Emergency Ministry, the plane crashed after the takeoff.
As the plane was ascending, a technical failure occurred, Interfax quoted an emergency ministry spokesman as saying.
The crew commander decided to return to the airport, however, for unknown reasons, the plane fell down in a field not far from a village as it was turning round towards the airport, the spokesman said.
The first report about the crash of the airplane, which was due to make a flight from Bishkek to Mashhad, Iran, arrived at around 8 p.m. Moscow time (1600 GMT).
Preliminary information indicated that the Boeing-737 crashed five km away from the Manas International Airport, which is 30 km from Bishkek, near the village of Dzhangi-Dzher.
Tashiyev said he has “no exact information as to whether the plane was owned” by a local or an Iranian airline company, although early reports said it was owned by Itek Air, a private airline company.