ALL 20 PEOPLE on board a domestic flight in Kazakhstan operated by the SCAT airline died today when their Bombardier jet crashed on approach to Almaty airport in thick fog, the airline said.

“Twenty people were on board – five crew members and 15 passengers,” the airline said in a statement, quoted by the Interfax news agency.

“According to preliminary information there are no survivors,” the statement added, saying the aircraft was a CRJ-200 made by Canadian manufacturer Bombardier.

SCAT said the plane went down about five kilometres  short of the financial centre’s main airport on a flight from the northern steppe city of Kokshetau.

Commercial KTK television said the plane crashed into a suburb of Almaty but gave no information of possible casualties or damage on the ground.

The Kazinform news agency reported that officials from both the interior and transportation ministry had travelled to the site of the crash.

The accident came just a month after a crash that killed 27, claiming the lives of much of the top echelon of the Kazakh state border service including the acting chief.

Aviation disasters remain a scourge across the former Soviet Union due to ageing hardware that often has not been replaced since the fall of the Soviet regime, as well as human error.

- © AFP 2013.

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