Forty four people were killed and eight survived with serious injuries when a Russian passenger plane crashed onto a motorway before landing, leaving bodies strewn over the road, officials said today.

The RussAir Tu-134 tried to land just before midnight local time yesterday on a motorway two km from Petrozavodsk airport in the Karelia region of northern Russia.

But the plane, which was carrying out a flight from Moscow's Domodedovo airport, crashed and caught fire before it approached the airport. "On July 20, a Tu-134 plane sustained a hard landing. Contact was lost with the pilot at 23:40. The survivors have been sent to Petrozavodsk hospital," the local branch of the emergencies ministry said in a statement on its website.