HUGE RUSSIAN JET SLAMS INTO CROWDED CITY.

Byline: Michael R. Gordon The New York Times

A huge Russian military transport carrying two fighter aircraft smashed into an apartment complex in southern Siberia on Saturday in one of the country's worst air disasters.

Russian officials feared that the death toll could exceed 100, with scores more injured.

The crash of the plane, seconds after it took off fully loaded with fuel, turned a quiet residential area near the city of Irkutsk into a raging inferno that swallowed up apartment buildings and stores. Among those reported hospitalized were children from a nearby orphanage.

Rescuers battled not only the fire and smoke but subzero temperatures to pull survivors from the rubble, making precise casualty estimates all but impossible.

The scale of the disaster shocked much of this nation, accustomed though it is to hardship. The news of the catastrophe dominated television and radio broadcasts.

Angry residents near Irkutsk, anxious about Russian aviation's dubious safety record, demanded a ban on flights over residential areas.

Trying to head off a public outcry, President Boris Yeltsin sent Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to the crash site to oversee the accident investigation. Yeltsin stressed in a statement that he wants to ``expose those who are to blame.''

A Kremlin spokesman added, ``The president has been deeply shaken by what has happened.''

According to officials, the 11-year-old An-124 transport, a behemoth with a wingspan one-third larger than a 747 passenger plane, took off from a weapons factory near Irkutsk.

The plane was carrying two Sukhoi fighter planes, variously described as Su-30s or Su-27s, to Vladivostok. Like most of Russia's military aircraft production, the planes were intended for export, in this case to Vietnam.

The transport plane had barely left the runway when it began to lose altitude. Witnesses said it fell rapidly and that the crew might have been trying to direct it into an open area.

If so, they failed. After only 20 seconds in the air, the plane crashed into a four-story apartment building in Irkutsk-2, a section of the Siberian city of Irkutsk, some 3,000 miles east of Moscow. It was 9:44 a.m. local time.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known. Russian news agencies said two engines on the left side of the An-124 failed.

But there was also speculation that the fighter planes inside the An-124 had not been stowed properly, meaning that the cargo weight had not balanced correctly. Another theory was that the plane was loaded with poor-quality fuel.

The plane's ``black box'' flight recorders were reportedly recovered and were being brought back to Moscow.

Russian television showed the tail of the transport embedded in the side of the apartment building, which was said to be on the brink of collapse. The impact set off the conflagration that followed.

Because the An-124 had just taken off, it was loaded to the brim with about 100 tons of jet fuel, which burst into flames. The fire quickly engulfed nearby apartment houses and stores. Parked cars were turned into charred heaps of metal. A curtain of coarse smoke descended.

Firemen rushed to the crash site, and the nearby orphanage and school were evacuated. Additional rescue workers, presumably those trained to find victims among the rubble, were summoned from Krasnoyarsk, in Siberia, and from Moscow.

Meanwhile, the casualty toll mounted. The grisly task of counting the dead was complicated by conflicting reports about the number of passengers aboard the An-124.

According to one report, the transport carried a crew of 17, as well as six officials from Russia's arms sales agency. But other reports said there might have been more passengers.

Most of those killed appeared to be on the ground. Local authorities asked survivors to register with police to help determine the number of those killed and missing.

As of 9 p.m. Moscow time, 29 bodies had been found. ORT, the government-controlled television network, said the number of dead ranged from 30 to 150.

The number of those injured was also hard to estimate in the confusion. Initial reports said 13 had been hospitalized, including eight children.

The disaster did little for Russia's uphill battle to improve its image for air traffic safety. An An-124 crashed in Turin, Italy, last year while trying to land.

Aging aircraft and poor maintenance have been the culprits in past air crashes.

Saturday's disaster was the second tragedy this week for Russia. Earlier, 67 coal miners died in an explosion in Novokuznetsk, Siberia - a calamity that also prompted much high-level regret and promises of corrective action.

The Russian government has a tried-and-true way to deal with disasters: Senior officials deplore them and order a search for those at fault. Rarely is the responsibility fixed at the top, although aircraft safety is generally a systemic problem and one directly linked to financing.

Yeltsin responded similarly Saturday. He expressed shock at the disaster and ordered his government, the Russian air force and the authorities in Irkutsk to carry out a thorough investigation. He pledged to help the survivors and relatives of the victims.

The military prosecutor in Irkutsk also ordered an investigation to see if there was a violation of flight rules.

Local authorities, however, sought to comfort the public with the suggestion that the tragedy could have been worse. They said an even greater disaster had been averted only because residents were out shopping Saturday. If the crash had occurred several hours earlier, as many as 500 might have been killed.

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos, 2 maps

PHOTO (1) The tail of a Russian military cargo jet leans against an apartment building Saturday in Irkutsk-2, Siberia.

(2) Rescue officials inspect the scene where the An-124 plane crashed.

(3) Burning wreckage from the transport lies strewn about in Irkutsk-2.

Associated Press 

Map: (1) Irkutsk

(2) Russia