A passenger jet travelling from Moscow to the Ural Mountains city of Perm crashed as it was preparing to land early on Sunday, killing all of the 88 people aboard.

A Chinese national was among the victims.

The plane was on its approach to land amid low cloud cover when it crashed into an unpopulated area of the city, just a few hundred meters from residential buildings.

A local resident witnessed the crash.

"I felt an explosion; it threw me out of bed. And then my daughter came running into the bedroom crying that war had broken out. Our neighbours, who were eye-witnesses, said that it was on fire when it was still in the air and it looked like a rocket and crashed near the building. And the whole sky was lit up like a firework display."

Aeroflot, the company that operated the flight, said among those killed were citizens from the United States, France, Turkey, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Latvia.

Irina Danenberg is spokeswoman from the company.

"Contact was lost when the plane was at a height of 1100 metres. The plane was discovered on the outskirts of Perm, completely destroyed. A fire had broken out. On the plane were 82 passengers, including 7 children as well as 6 crew members. "

A section of rail track was destroyed in the crash. Part of the Trans-Siberian railway was also shut down as a result of the rail damage.

Officials said there were no deaths on the ground; investigators had found the plane's "black box" flight recorders and were working to analyze them.

Igor Orlov is minister of public security of Perm region.

"The fire broke out at an altitude of 1000 metres. Afterwards, contact was lost and the plane exploded. We do not dismiss the possibility of finding survivors. There is a chance that there are remains of the plane that crashed into a forest. The last information that the crew had got was that something had happened."

Experts have blamed weak government controls, poor pilot training and a cost-cutting mentality among many carriers that affects safety.

A spokesman for the federal prosecutors' Investigative Committee said the most likely cause of the crash was technical failure.