Desk Report: A Russian plane exploded into flames after crashing on a highway just short of its airport, killing 44 and leaving eight survivors fighting for their lives, officials said Tuesday.

The RusAir Tupolev 134 was trying to land at its destination of Petrozavodsk in the Karelia region of north western Russia in bad weather but failed to make the runway and instead hurtled onto a road two kilometres (1.25 miles) away.

Investigators said it was too early to jump to conclusions but Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said the crash appeared the result of an error by the pilot who tried to spot the runway visually in bad weather, and failed.

Rescuers in respirators removed unrecognisably charred bodies in black sacks from the scene of the crash, where sections of the burnt-out plane were strewn across the highway, an AFP correspondent witnessed.

“The plane sustained a hard landing two kilometres from Petrozavodsk,” the emergencies ministry said in a statement on its website. “Forty-four people were killed and eight people injured.”

The plane was flying from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, carrying 43 passengers and nine crew members.

A column of ambulances carried survivors to Petrozavodsk’s Besovets airport where the emergencies ministry later transported five of the wounded to Moscow, an AFP correspondent saw.

Among the survivors were a 10-year-old boy called Anton Terekhin and his 14-year-old sister Anastasia Terekhina, whose mother died in the crash, the emergencies ministry said.

Medics decided not to evacuate the young boy due to his extremely poor state, Health Minister Tatyana Golikova told journalists.

“The boy’s state is extremely serious, critical. He had a large loss of blood,” Golikova told journalists in comments reported on the ministry’s website.

A Swedish national, a Dutch citizen and two Ukrainians were among the dead, as well as a family of four with dual Russian and US citizenship, the emergencies ministry said on its website.

The Russians who died included a well-known football referee, Vladimir Pettai, and six nuclear energy experts.

As the plane crashed, it splintered off the tops of trees and snapped power lines, before landing perilously close to houses in the nearby village of Besovets.

The force of the crash scattered wreckage over a distance of 300 metres (yards), investigators said.

Local resident Mikhail Osipov told Channel One television how he “heard a bang and thought at first it was some incredibly loud thunder.” He saw the plane crash in a “ball of fire” and ran out to attempt to rescue passengers.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin expressed their condolences to the victims’ families and the regional authorities announced three days of mourning.