Soviet Plane Crashes at Minsk With Unspecified ‘Casualties’
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MOSCOW — An Aeroflot passenger plane crashed last Friday near the Minsk airport in Byelorussia, killing an unspecified number of people aboard, according to a newspaper reaching Moscow today.
“On Feb. 1, a TU-134 on the Minsk-Leningrad route crashed in the vicinity of the Minsk airport,” said Sunday’s edition of a Byelorussian paper that arrived in Moscow by mail.
“There were casualties,” it said. The TU-134 has a capacity of 80 passengers, and Soviet internal flights are generally booked to maximum capacity..
The highly unusual announcement was signed by the Council of Ministers of Byelorussia, west of Moscow.
The Soviet media rarely announce plane crashes unless the plane involved is carrying foreigners or high Soviet officials.
“There is a distinct possibility that there were foreigners aboard, although we can’t be sure,” a Western diplomat said.
Western sources said they have heard reports that 19 generals and high Soviet officials were killed recently in a plane crash, but it was not immediately known whether they were aboard the TU-134.
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