UZBEKISTAN: Investigators in Uzbekistan said yesterday that the landing gear probably failed on an airliner that crashed at Tashkent airport on Tuesday night, killing all 37 people on board, including the head of the United Nations mission to the Central Asian state, Mr Richard Conroy.
The Uzbek government declared a national day of mourning today, while officials began studying the "black box" flight recorders found in the wreckage of the Yak-40 jet, which plunged to earth and exploded in thick fog as it tried to land for a second time.
Russian television showed the shattered fuselage of the aircraft, apparently upside down, in a shallow canal alongside the perimeter wall of Tashkent airport. Emergency workers picked though the wreckage and carried black body bags away from the scene.
Mr Rashid Kadyrov, Uzbekistan's prosecutor general, said there was no suggestion that the plane was the target of a terror attack. The country hosts US troops fighting in Afghanistan and has suffered attacks in recent years from radical Islamic groups intent on toppling authoritarian president Mr Islam Karimov.