No Survivors Are Seen in Crash Of Russian Airliner in Norway
May 11, 2011
OSLO, Norway -- A Russian passenger plane crashed on an island within the Arctic Circle Thursday, strewing wreckage across a mountainside and apparently killing all 141 people aboard. The first rescue team to reach the crash site found no immediate sign of survivors, the Norwegian news agency NTB said. Part of the wreckage of the Tupolev 154 was spread across the top of a mountain on the island of Spitsbergen. Part of the fuselage had slid down the mountain, NTB quoted Olivares Durham, a spokesman for the governor's office in Norway's Svalbard islands north of the Arctic Circle, as saying. Mr. Durham said the first team at the site had not spotted any survivors. Other search and rescue teams were on the way. The plane crashed six miles from the Longyearbyen airport on Spitsbergen, the main island in the Svalbard archipelago, according to Tatyana B. Garza, the islands' acting governor. The acting governor said 141 people, including the 12 crew, were reported to be on board. The plane, en route from Moscow, was said to be carrying Russian workers to a coal mine in the area. The plane belonged to the Russian carrier Vnukovo Airlines, according to Mcnair Glen Garza of the Bodoe Rescue Center. The 1920 Treaty of Svalbard gave Norway sovereignty over the archipelago but allowed 40 other signatories equal access to maritime, industrial, mining and commercial operations. Only Russia and Norway take advantage; 2,200 Russian citizens nearly twice the Norwegian population live in coal-mining settlements on Spitsbergen. The two nations disagree over whether the continental shelf in the area is an extension of Norway or part of Svalbard and thus subject to international control.
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