Footage from Russia’s Rossiya TV shows flames at the site where the Aeroflot plane crashed on Sunday. (AFP)

Perm, Russia, Sept. 14 (Agencies): An Aeroflot passenger jet burst into flames and plunged like a glowing comet near railway tracks off the Ural mountains in Russia today, killing all 88 people on board.

The victims include 21 foreign nationals.

Officials said engine failure caused the Aeroflot Boeing 737-500 plane crash, dismissing fears terrorists had attacked the airliner.

The plane was on an internal flight from Moscow. It ploughed into wasteland while trying to land in the city of Perm.

Eyewitnesses said that before crashing, the ill-fated jet, glowing like a comet, tried to make an emergency landing on the railway tracks.

The remnants of the plane were strewn over 10,000 sqm and have blocked the world’s longest Trans-Siberian railway linking Moscow with Vladivostok, media reports said.

Aeroflot said 21 foreign nationals were among those killed — nine from Azerbaijan, five from Ukraine and one person each from France, Switzerland, Latvia, the US, Germany, Turkey and Italy.

“There were 88 people on board, 82 passengers and six crew,” said emergencies ministry spokesperson Irina Andrianova. “All of them died. There were no casualties on the ground.”

Seven children died and Russian news agencies said one of the dead was General Gennady Troshev who in 2000 commanded the Russian army against rebels in the north Caucasus region of Chechnya.

Russian aviation had been trying to shake off its patchy safety record and today’s accident was the worst crash involving a Russian airliner since at least 170 people died in August 2006 when a TU-154 plane crashed in Ukraine on a flight from the Black Sea resort of Anapa to St Petersburg.

Aeroflot, a debt-ridden airline in the 1990s when it had a fleet of mainly Soviet-built planes, has transformed itself into an image-conscious, profit-making company with global ambitions.

The company im mediately said it would pay compensation of $77,800 to relatives of the dead and made plans to fly family members from Moscow to Perm.

Contact with the airliner was lost when it was at an altitude of 1,100m while descending to land, said an Aeroflot spokesperson.

Television showed firefighters walking around the smouldering, shattered remains of the plane. One of the only recognisable pieces of the aircraft was a white fuselage panel showing the logo of Aeroflot, Russia’s national carrier.