Nine On Board Feared Dead

A KA-32 helicopter with nine souls on board went down in southern Russia Thursday. There is virtually no hope that anyone survived.

Owners of the aircraft say it was ferrying supplies to a construction site in the mountains near the Black Sea resort of Sochi when it went missing in heavy fog.  The Russian Emergency Situations ministry said there were four crewmembers and five passengers on board.

Construction workers found the burned-out helicopter wreckage near a mountain, according to Moscow's Interstate Aviation Committee.

Controllers say they were talking to the KA-32 crew when they heard a loud bang over the radio. Witnesses in the mountains near Sochi say the aircraft was flying low over the terrain, heard an explosion and saw a plume of smoke.

In just the past three weeks, 28 people have died in Russian rotorcraft wrecks. August 20, an Mi-8 went down in the Kamchatka Peninsula, killing all 20 people on board. One of the victims was a regional governor.

Six days later, two MI-24 military helicopter gunships collided in mid-air, after maneuvers in Russia's Far East. Six crew members died in the collision.

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