At least 65 of about 90 were killed on Sunday when a Kyrgyz airliner bound for Iran crashed shortly after take-off from the Kyrgyzstan capital of Bishkek, the government said. Kyrgyz officials, who issued conflicting reports on the death toll and number of people aboard the Boeing 737-200, said the blaze was so fierce many victims could not be identified. The Boeing-737 with 90 people onboard went down a few kilometers from Bishkek's Manas airport after the plane suffered a dramatic loss of cabin pressure, said Prime Minister Igor Chudinov. The Boeing 737 was headed to Iran when it crashed near Bishkek's Manas International Airport, said Yelena Bayalinova, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Health. She said there were 22 survivors and three missing in addition to the 65 dead. “According to updated information, 68 passengers were killed, including 24 Kyrgyz, five Iranians, one Turkish national, three Canadians, three Kazakhs and one Chinese,” Chudinov's spokeswoman Rosa Daudova said. Bayalinova told the RIA news agency that there could be discrepancies in the list because it was compiled from reports from survivors “some of whom are in a state of shock and could not spell their names properly.” Earlier, Daudova had said there were at least 71 dead and 25 survivors. But other officials, including Bayalinova and presidential adviser Tokon Mamytov later gave lower figures. “When the plane caught fire, one of its doors was blocked and everyone rushed to another door,” a government spokesman said. “There was a stampede and many of those on board will only be able to be identified using DNA analysis, they were simply carbonized.” The Boeing, owned by Itek Air, a private Kyrgyz company that is on the European Union blacklist of airlines banned from flying in EU airspace, was chartered by an Iranian company and bound for Tehran. Transport Minister Nurlan Sulaimanov said the plane, built in 1979, was in good shape and had been inspected only two months ago. “It took off and reported a technical problem and tried to return to the airport,” said a spokeswoman for Manas airport, which lies 30 kilometers from Bishkek. Chudinov said all seven crew members were among the survivors of the crash, the worst in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan since the Central Asian state gained independence in the early 1990s. Kyrgyzstan boasts Central Asia's biggest and most modern airport. Bayalinova told reporters that 17 teenagers, a basketball team from a local sports school, were on board. He said seven of them survived and were in hospital. The accident came only four days after a Spanair flight bound for Spain's Canary Islands crashed in Madrid on Wednesday, killing 154 people.
