Rescuers yesterday pulled 48 bodies from the frozen rubble of a block of flats destroyed when a giant military aircraft ploughed into a residential area in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, killing more than 60 people.
The Russian Emergencies Minister, Mr Sergei Shoigu, said 64 people, including the plane's 23 passengers and crew, were killed or missing following Saturday's crash but that 330 others in the area at the time had been accounted for.
Rescuers used sniffer dogs to conduct the search for victims, pulling 42 bodies and the partial remains of six others from the rubble, the Ministry for Emergencies said in Irkutsk. Seven children were among 15 people hospitalised after the crash, many suffering from severe burns. Officials said the chances of finding survivors were slim given the intensity of the initial blaze and daytime temperatures of minus 20C. In the wake of the catastrophe, airforce safety chiefs put a three-week flight ban on the giant Antonov-124 transporters, Russian television said.
The Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, who arrived in Irkutsk yesterday to head the crash inquiry, offered his "deepest condolences" to relatives of those killed in this "great tragedy".
Some 1,639 rescue workers and troops working in relays sifted through the rubble, while engineers used heavy lifting gear to remove parts of the charred aircraft which were taken away for inspection.
Three "black box" flight recorders meanwhile arrived in Moscow for analysis although an officer at the federal military air safety service said heat damage might make them of limited use to investigators.
One survivor described from her hospital bed how a "wall of fire" had engulfed the children's home where she worked.
"First of all there was a big explosion. All the windows flew out and then there was a shock wave and a wall of fire in front of our eyes.
"Then everybody started to panic, and we started evacuating the children."
Mr Chernomyrdin said he had ordered that emergency payments be made to the victims' families and said 50 billion roubles (about £5.74 million) had been released to rebuild homes and an orphanage destroyed in the catastrophe.
He warned against jumping to "hasty conclusions" about the causes of the crash, but pledged to study local complaints that the runway from the Irkutsk aircraft factory used by the crashed Antonov took planes over residential areas.
Interfax cited informed sources as saying the plane's crew had told flight controllers shortly before the crash that two engines had failed, even though the craft passed a technical inspection a month ago.
The aircraft's Ukrainian-built engines or suspect fuel quality have been cited as the likely causes of the crash.
The local military prosecutor on Saturday opened a criminal investigation into the catastrophe, which followed a day of national mourning into a coal mine blast which killed 67 miners.