Plane with 100 on board crashes in Kazakhstan, 7 dead (Lead)

Nur Sultan, Dec 27 (IANS) At least seven people were killed after a plane with 100 people on board crashed on Friday shortly after taking off from the Almaty airport in Kazakhstan, officials said.

"Today at 7.22 a.m., Bek Air Flight Z2100 en route from Almaty to Nur-Sultan lost altitude and crashed into a concrete structure," TASS News Agency quoted the press service of the Committee of Civil Aviation at Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Industry and Infrastructure Development, as saying.

"The plane crashed into a two-storey building. Rescue efforts have started right away, and no fire broke out. Evacuation of passengers and crewmembers is underway. Seven people died in the crash," the press service added.

According to preliminary reports, there were 95 passengers and five crew members.

The Bek Air fleet consists of Fokker 100 planes.

Until the reasons of the crash are established, use of other aircraft of this type has been temporarily suspended, officials said.

A governmental commission has been set up to investigate the cause of the crash.

Kazakhstan’s President Qasym-Jomart Toqayev expressed "deep condolences" to the victims’ relatives, reports the BBC.

Bek Air was founded in 1999, targeting VIP flight operations, according to the company’s website. Nowadays, it describes itself as Kazakhstan’s first low-cost airline.

This is not the first serious plane crash to have occurred in the country.

On January 29, 2013, a passenger plane travelling from the northern town of Kokshetau came down near Almaty, killing 20 people.

A month earlier, 27 people died when a military plane carrying senior Kazakh security officials crashed in the south of the country.