A Russian passenger plane was forced to make an emergency landing on a Siberian river on Monday, killing at least five, and prompting President Dmitry Medvedev to call for the Soviet plane to be banned. The Antonov-24 belonging to the Angara airline was carrying 37 passengers and crew between Tomsk and Surgut when an engine caught fire, forcing it to ditch in the Ob river in the Tomsk region of Siberia, the investigative committee said in a statement.
"According to preliminary information, five people died and the fate of two more is unknown," investigators said, adding that the passengers included a baby. "The crew said an engine was on fire and announced on the radio their intention to make an emergency landing," a spokesman for the Russian civil aviation agency, Sergei Izvolsky, told AFP. Medvedev said in televised comments that the Antonov-24 plane should be subject to the same measures as another Soviet airliner, the TU-134, which he ordered last month to be withdrawn by 2012 after a deadly crash.
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