Forty-one people, including children, were killed Sunday in a fiery airplane accident at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, a spokeswoman for the Russian Investigative Committee said.
"There were 78 people including crew members on board the plane," the Investigative Committee said in a statement. "According to the updated info which the investigation has as of now, 37 people survived."
Video footage showed desperate passengers leaping out of the Sukhoi SSJ100 operated by national airline Aeroflot onto an inflatable evacuation slide and staggering across the airport's tarmac and grass, some holding luggage.
At least two children were among the passengers who died, the Investigative Committee said.
Another 11 people were injured, Dmitry Matveyev, the Moscow region's health minister, initially said. Three of them had been hospitalized but they were not in a serious condition, he added.
The airport said in a statement that the plane, which had taken off from Sheremetyevo Airport for the northern city of Murmansk, turned back for unspecified technical reasons and made a hard landing that started the fire.
Some news reports cited sources as saying the plane bounced several times during the landing
"Investigators soon will begin interviewing victims, eyewitnesses, airport staff and the airline carrier, as well as other persons responsible for the operation of the aircraft," Investigative Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said.
The SSJ100, also known as the Superjet, is a two-engine regional jet put into service in 2011 with considerable fanfare as a signal that Russia's troubled aerospace industry was on the rise.
The plane is largely used in Russia as a replacement for outdated Soviet-era aircraft, but also is used by airlines in other countries, including Armenia and Mexico.
This is the second fatal accident involving the plane. In 2012, a demonstration flight in Indonesia struck a mountain, killing all 45 aboard.
