About 70 dead in Kyrgyz plane crash
BISHKEK (Reuters) - About 70 people, including members of a teenage basketball team, died on Sunday when a Kyrgyz airliner crashed in a ball of flames shortly after take-off from the Central Asian state's main airport.
Kyrgyz officials, who issued conflicting reports on the death toll and number of people aboard the Boeing 737-200, said the blaze was so fierce many victims could not be identified.
"When the plane caught fire, one of its doors was blocked and everyone rushed to another door," a government spokesman said.
"There was a stampede and many of those on board will only be able to be identified using DNA analysis, they were simply carbonized."
The Boeing, owned by local private carrier Itek-Air, was chartered by an Iranian company and bound for Tehran.
"It took off and reported a technical problem and tried to return to the airport," said a spokeswoman for Manas airport, which lies 30 km (20 miles) from Bishkek.
Kyrgyz officials, including Prime Minister Igor Chudinov, rushed to the airport for an emergency meeting.
Chudinov said afterwards that initial reports suggested the plane had suffered a sudden loss of cabin pressure, causing the pilot to request an emergency landing.
A government spokesman said of the 87 passengers and seven crew on board, only 24 survived, including two crew members.
In a conflicting report, Health Ministry spokeswoman Yelena Bayalinova said 65 people died, three were missing and 24 survived, making 92 people on board.
The Health Ministry later published a list of 22 survivors, including eight Iranians and 14 Kyrgyz nationals.
Bayalinova told the RIA news agency that there could be discrepancies in the list because it was compiled from reports from survivors "some of whom are in a state of shock and could not spell their names properly".
Chudinov told reporters there were nationals from China, Turkey, Iran and Canada on board, but gave no further details.
A government official told reporters that 17 teenagers, a basketball team from a local sports school, were on board. He said seven of them survived and were in hospital.
Police sealed off the crash site, close to the Manas airport runway. Part of the airport is used by the U.S. military as a base to supply the international force fighting Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.
Airport employees who had seen the wreckage said the tail was the only part of the fuselage still intact.
Transport Minister Nurlan Sulaimanov said the plane, built in 1979, was in good shape and had been inspected only two months ago.
(Writing by Oleg Shchedrov; editing by Jon Boyle and Angus MacSwan)
