A Russian airliner crashed on landing and burst into flames in Siberia on Sunday, killing at least 122 people and injuring more than 50, emergency officials said.

A video grab shows rescuers near the tail of an Airbus A-310 which crashed at the airport of Russia's Siberian city of Irkutsk on July 9, 2006. The Russian passenger plane carrying 200 people, many of them holidaymakers, crashed during a domestic flight to Siberia on Sunday, killing most of those on board, news agencies said. [Reuters]

Many of the 200 people on board were children, including 14 pre-teen children, flying for holidays on Lake Baikal, a popular Siberian spot in summer, media reported.

At least 122 bodies had been recovered and 53 people were in hospital being treated for burns, trauma and the effects of smoke inhalation, an Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman said. The fate of 25 passengers was unknown.

"It was awful. I saw people burning, they were burning," Margarita Svetlova, who survived the crash, told Russia's First Channel television.

"I probably lost consciousness for a minute ... I unfastened my seat belt. I ran and started shouting and swearing, looking for an exit ... The inflatable escape chute wouldn't inflate, but I jumped all the same. I was lucky, I just hurt my leg a bit."

Sibir airlines flight 778 from Moscow to Irkutsk, an Airbus A-310, overshot the runway at around 2:50 a.m. Moscow time (2250 GMT on Saturday). It ploughed through a wall into nearby buildings and caught fire.

The only surviving stewardess opened an emergency exit, enabling passengers in the rear of the plane to jump to safety. Of the eight-strong crew, a pilot also survived.

"I heard a bang and the earth shook," Mikhail Yegerev, a witness in his 50s, told Reuters. "I went out and saw plumes of smoke and the plane's tail."

Some 600 rescue workers used cutting gear to recover bodies after taking two hours to douse the burning Airbus fuselage.

President Vladimir Putin called a day of mourning on Monday.

TV pictures showed the smoking wreckage of the plane in between several lockup garages. Only its tail section, bearing the white-on-blue logo of Sibir airlines, was still intact.

"My garage is here. I ran there and saw people coming -- blackened with smoke, with injuries, burns and a woman with a broken leg," Yegerev said.

Pain and Despair 

At Moscow's Domodedovo airport, where flight 778 took off on Saturday evening, friends and relatives sought news of their loved ones at an improvised information centre. Some smoked nervously, some burst into tears, some made endless phone calls.

wounded woman who was a passenger of the Airbus A-310 which crashed landed makes her way on crutches to the airport building at Russia's Siberian city of Irkutsk, July 9, 2006. [Retuers]

One man, called Vyacheslav, lost his brother, sister-in-law and their 4-year-old child in the crash, his friend Larisa Kolcheva said. "We were sitting with them yesterday before they got on the flight," she told Reuters.

"I just can't believe this has happened."

A woman called Yekaterina said she had seen off her friend, Marina Khaptanova, who was flying to see her 9-year-old son, Alexei. "Now it looks like this will never happen."

Sibir said three Chinese, one Azeri and a German on board had died, while seven other foreign nationals were in hospital.

Prosecutors opened a criminal probe into the crash, with human error and equipment failure considered among the possible causes. There was no immediate suspicion of foul play.

Transport Minister Igor Levitin said the plane's pilots had told air traffic controllers they had landed successfully but then radio contact broke off suddenly, news agencies reported.

Levitin also said the runway in Irkutsk was wet after rain.

Airbus said the crashed plane, assembled in 1987, had made more than 10,000 flights. It said it would send specialists to Russia and provide full assistance to the authorities.

In May, an Airbus A-320 of the Armenian airline Armavia, flying from Yerevan to the Russian resort of Sochi, crashed in the Black Sea. All 113 people on board were killed.

Less than two years ago, a Sibir airlines Tupolev-154 was one of two passenger planes downed almost simultaneously by Chechen suicide bombers, killing 89 people. Russian forces have been fighting a Chechen separatist insurgency for over a decade.