A RUSSIAN military plane crashed yesterday in the Black Sea as it made its way to Syria with 92 people on board, including more than 60 Red Army Choir members heading to celebrate the New Year with troops.

    Local news agencies, citing the defense ministry, said the Tu-154 plane had crashed shortly after takeoff at 5:40 a.m. local time from the southern city of Adler where it had been refueling.

    Defense ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said one body had been recovered 6 kilometers off the coast of the resort city of Sochi, as a frantic search operation continued to hunt for the missing.

    “Fragments of the Tu-154 plane of the Russian defense ministry were found 1.5 kilometers from the Black Sea coast of the city of Sochi at a depth of 50 to 70 meters,” the ministry said.

    The plane had been on a routine flight to Russia’s Hmeimim airbase in western Syria, which has been used to launch air strikes in Moscow’s military campaign supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country’s devastating civil war.

    Among the plane’s 84 passengers were Russian servicemen as well as 64 members of the Alexandrov Ensemble, the army’s official musical group also known as the Red Army Choir, and its conductor Valery Khalilov. They were headed to Syria to participate in New Year celebrations at the airbase.

    There were also eight crew members on board. Nine journalists were among the passengers.

    A list of passengers published by the defense ministry also included Elizaveta Glinka, a doctor and charity worker who serves on the Kremlin human rights council.

    Mikhail Fedotov, who heads the council, said Glinka was traveling to Syria to bring medication to a university hospital in the coastal city of Latakia near the airbase.

    Russia’s Investigative Committee said a criminal probe had been launched to determine whether violations of air transportation safety had led to the crash.

    Tu-154 aircraft have been involved in a number of accidents in the past.

    In April 2010 many high-ranking Polish officials, including then President Lech Kaczynski, were killed when a Tu-154 airliner went down in thick fog while approaching the Smolensk airport in western Russia.

    (SD-Agencies)