MOSCOW, July 3 -- Russian investigators sorted through the wreckage of a Russian airliner to determine why it crashed Tuesday near the eastern Siberian city of Irkutsk, killing all 145 people aboard.
The plane crashed and burst into flames during a flight from Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains to Vladivostok when it went down, Russia's Interior Ministry said.
As many as 20 Chinese nationals were on the plane.
Russia media reports the plane had tried twice to land at Irkutsk, where it was scheduled to refuel, before crashing in its third attempt, Tass reported. Search teams found one of the plane's black-box flight recorders.
Russian television networks RTR and TV-6 said the jet had been on an approach path to Irkutsk airport, where it was scheduled to make a refueling stop before continuing its eastward flight to Vladivostok, when it vanished from air traffic controllers' radar screens.
"There are no survivors," an official of the Ministry of Emergency Situation told United Press International.
It was not known if anyone was killed on the ground, but local reporters said the area is peppered with country houses, and fatalities on the ground could not be excluded.
RTR television said President Vladimir Putin was being kept informed of the tragedy, and a special government commission - headed by Deputy Premier Ilya Klebanov -- had been appointed to investigate the cause of the crash.
