Forty-four killed in Russian hockey team jet crash

MOSCOW: A Russian Plane carrying an ice hockey team crashed on take-off, killing Forty-four people and strangely one man survived. 

A chartered Yak-42 passenger jet took off from Yaroslavl airport some 300 kilometres (185 miles) northeast of Moscow.

The local emergencies ministry said the jet was taking members of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey team to the Belarus capital Minsk for the their first match of the 2011-2012 season. The team is trained by Canada’s Brad McCrimmon, a former assistant coach with the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings, and has several foreign players on the roster posted on its website. 

The Swedish embassy said that one of its nationals, a hockey goalie, had been killed in the crash. The crash also revived memories of an August 1979 disaster that claimed the lives of 17 football players from the Tashkent side Pakhtakor. 

Russia has experienced another summer full of mishaps that have for the first time also seriously impacted the country’s once-proud space programme.