Boy, 9, survives Russia plane crash

A nine-year-old boy and his teenage sister were among eight people who survived the air crash in the north of Russia that killed 44 including their mother, the emergencies ministry said.

Nine-year-old Anton Terekhin and his 14-year-old sister Anastasia Terekhina are being treated for severe injuries in hospital in Petrozavodsk close to where the plane crashed onto a motorway just before midnight.

The brother and sister feature on a list of the eight survivors published by the Karelia branch of the emergencies ministry on its website. They are registered as residents of the Pacific island of Sakhalin.

A spokeswoman confirmed to AFP that the two were being treated in hospital but that their mother Oksana was killed in the crash. A stewardess also survived, the only one of the plane's crew who was not killed.

The lifenews.ru website said that the Terekhin family were making the long journey from Sakhalin via Moscow to visit relatives in Karelia. They were due to be met at Petrozavodsk airport by the children's uncle.

"Both Anton and Nastya (Anastasia) are unconscious with severe burns and wounds," a local emergencies ministry official told lifenews.ru.

It said that the uncle who was meeting them at the airport had watched the plane crash with his own eyes and then suffered a heart attack and dropped unconscious.

He has also undergone an operation and has yet to regain consciousness, lifenews.ru said. There was no immediate confirmation of this report.

One Swedish citizen, a Dutch citizen and two Ukrainians were also among the dead as well as a family of four with dual Russian and American nationality, the emergencies ministry said.

The plane hit the highway at speed, burst into flames and its fragments blasted hundreds of metres (yards) apart.

It is not clear how the eight injured were able to survive the impact of the crash which reporedly catapulted some of the corpses hundreds of metres away from the site of the catastrophe.