Yaroslavl, Russia-A Russian plane carrying a top hockey team crashed on take-off Wednesday, killed at least 43 people and two further leave critically injured, officials said. It was one of the worst plane crashes, always with a sports team.

The Russian emergency situations Ministry said the Yak-42 in a Bank of the Volga aircraft immediately after leaving an airport located near the Western City of Yaroslavl, 150 km North-East of Moscow. It was sunny at the moment.

It said the plane carried the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey team to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, where the team was to play Thursday against Dinamo Minsk in the opening game of the season in the Kontinental Hockey League. The aircraft had 45 people on board, including 37 passengers and eight crew members.

Officials said that Russian player Alexander Galimov survived the crash with a crew member.

Eleven foreigners have been reportedly on board the Jet. A Czech Embassy official said Czech players were killed under which Jan Marek, Josef Vasicek and Karel Rachunek.

The level, which is relatively new, built in 1993 and belonged to a small Moscow-based yak-service company had crashed.

Swarms of police and rescue crashed on Tunoshna, a picturesque village with a blue domed church on the banks of the Volga. One of the aircraft engines could come to be seen from the river and combed provide a fleet of ships water. Russian rescue teams fought, heft to the facilities of the big, strong athletes in stretchers up muddy, steep river bank.

A resident, Irina Pryakhova, saw down the aircraft, then heard a loud bang and saw a plume of smoke.

"It was sweeping in flight, it was clear that something is wrong," she said. "I looked up facilities-they grow to the shore, some still in their seats with safety belts."

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sent the country's Transport Minister immediately on the site, 10 km east of Yaroslavl. President Dmitry Medvedev planned tour the site of the crash.

Lokomotiv Yaroslavl is a leading force in Russian since and comes in the Kontinental Hockey League last year. The team coach is Canadian Brad McCrimmon, who took over in May. He was most recently an assistant coach with the Detroit Red Wings, and played for years in the NHL for the Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Hartford, and Phoenix.

The Russian team brought several European top player and former NHL stars, including the Slovakian forward and national team captain Pavol Demitra, who in the National Hockey League played for St. Louis Blues and Vancouver Canucks.

Other top names in the team are Russian Defender Ruslan Salei and Karlis Skrastins and Swedish goalie Stefan LIV.

The KHL is an international club League, the teams together pits from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Russia and Slovakia. Locomotive was one of three Russian masters 1997, 2002-2003. It took bronze last season.

A Cup match between hockey team Almtuna is and in the Russian city UFA Atlant was from the center called after the news of the crash of Konintental Hockey League was announced head Alexander Medvedev. Television images of an empty arena in Ufa as a grief-stricken fans left the stadium Russian broadcast.

"We will do our best, so that hockey in Yaroslavl will not die, and people live for still, who were at this level," said the Russian ice hockey Federation President Vladislav Tretyak.

In the last few years of Russia and the other former Soviet republics, some of the world's worst air have traffic safety records. Experts blame the poor safety record after the age of the aircraft, weak government control, poor pilot training, and a cost-cutting mentality.

Medvedev has announced to aging Soviet-designed aircraft of the service from next year. The short - and medium-term Yak-42 is since 1980 in the service and about 100 Russian airlines still in use.

An other Russian passenger jet in the northwestern city of Petrozavodsk, 47 people crashed killed in June. The crash of the Tu-134 plane is been blamed on pilot error.

In other aircraft crashes with sports teams, 30 members of the Uruguayan Rugby Club who the old Christians in a crash in the Andes in 1972 were killed.

The entire eighteen US figure skating team died at one on the way to the World Championships 1961 in Brussels.

1949 18 Players in the vicinity of Turin, Italy died the Torino football team, during the Munich air crash of 1958-eight Manchester United players cost.

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