well. likely to be. international thirteen people have been confirmed including two children after a plane burst into flames during an emergency landing in the russian capital official say at least thirty seven people have survived the fate of the twenty eight passengers and crew remains unclear. russia's investigative committee has launched a criminal probe into the incident both the russian president and prime minister

have expressed condolences to the families of the victims. israeli prime minister vows to carry on a campaign of strikes that targets positions in gaza as a major flare up of cross border violence has continued for a second day. on the venezuelan russian foreign minister is discussing u.s. threats of military force. the opposition leader. thanks for joining us it's midnight here in moscow international. and we start this hour with breaking news which is that at least thirty. scene people including two

children have died in a plane tragedy moscow's largest airport jet burst into flames during an emergency landing at sheremetyevo airport with seventy eight passengers and crew on board at this point we know for sure thirty seven have survived but the fate of the remaining twenty eight people that is not yet known many thought to be in intensive care and i must warn you may find this video coming up now of the fire on the runway disturbing. if to. the feel. like to be out yeah.

ok let's get an update from our chorus from the biggest donna has been following events and bring is the latest information from sheremetyevo airport and. it's worrying i think now that we've got officials talking about the number of survivors as opposed to anything else what more can you tell us at this point. well yes indeed we are at the sheremetyevo airport at one of the at one of its at terminals and i mean tell me if the scene behind me looks anything like a major area of a russian capital of a multi million populated city well really the sheremetyevo airport has been shut down almost completely just one emergency runway is operational and so when it

comes to the tragedy here is the timeline the understanding of the timeline that we have so far the super super jet to cook off and the very shortly after that it got apparently hit by a lightning strike that caused for the commute for its communication systems to go offline basically the pilots lost all contact with the ground that's when. they made the decision to turn around and make an emergency landing which turned into a full on crash landing apparently as we've heard from some of the passengers of the plane the aircraft hit the ground twice and on the second strike it caught on fire and it caught on fire apparently what happened back then the shafts is the penetrated the fuel tanks and so since it was just forty thirty to

forty minutes into the flight so the tanks they will fall there was plenty of fuel to set ablaze and that's what happened some absolutely horrifying pictures that were both from inside the aircraft and from the outside that's why we can see the aircraft on the runway on the tarmac already ablaze basically the whole tail of the plane was ablaze so this is probably where most of the victims were in fact we heard from some of the witnesses from some of the people who witnessed the tragedy have a listen. it was quite unexpected we had a flight to you catherine went to the gate a little earlier so's not to be laying so we certainly had the window i just turned my head and all of a sudden i saw the burning plane with huge plumes of black smoke as arrived at the scene within two minutes they started fighting the fire they didn't show signs of panic as the plane was too close to those that were waiting on the runways we

didn't know it was landing it looked like it was just fifty meters from the nearest aircraft. because. this plane was landing engulfed in a terrible fire firefighters were quickly on the scene but i couldn't see being evacuated from where i was in the terminal. so. while the airline spokesperson has revealed that apparently the evacuation was done under the protocol time it was done in about. fifty five seconds we're being told while the standard time is about ninety seconds so well that's good news i guess and so well when it comes to this airports i mean so flights inbound to moscow have been bound to this particular airport to share metaphor have been resurrected we've had announcement on the speaker phone saying that well of course some of the airports other ports there are at least three of those they have been trying to take in some

of the flights bound here to share metaphor but still obviously the conduct handle they can handle just. all of the flights inbound and so what we've heard for instance we've heard about flights landing in other russian cities and even abroad for instance the city of minsk in belarus on the capital of finland helsinki and also we've seen literally motorcades of all sorts of official vehicles from the investigative committee to the ambulances to the security services really you name it in fact just outside of this terminal a few ambulances are still there they are still stationed there ready to to to provide their services to anyone who might be in need now there are plenty of relatives over those who have been on the plane and from what we understand a lot of some of the at least some of the passengers are still here they're still in the airport in fact we've just had

a chance to we've just seen some of the relatives walk out just out there just just outside and you probably can't see but there's basically like a large pool of journalists always there waiting for a for some people who tried getting some comments but all of them absolutely all of them refused to say anything so really it kind of looks like the officials instructed the relatives not to give any comments so far the. we're here we will be watching the situation as it develops and bring you all the latest and you before you go if you can hear me i just want to ask you another question is i think it's quite important to this story is this correct with regards to the lightning strike where are we getting that information from is this right the you got to speak to somebody who was on the plane or another source. well we talked in fact we talked to one of the passengers of the plane and one of the journalists asked him if he recalls of the liking strike and he said that yes indeed he did see

a bright flash also there were reports unconfirmed but still that the flight crew confirmed this that the flight crew revealed that their craft was hit by a lightning strike so but i mean a most modern aircraft they do have like a lightning strike protections all the shouldn't affect a plane so what happened on board of course the investigation is still ongoing and it's only up to the investigative committee to deliver the final verdict as to what happened to this particular sukhoi superjet ok mers some important from asian i think there many thanks for the day that is done at sheremetyevo airport. ok let's bring in a bit more information about the particular plane in question the s s j one hundred is a sukhoi superjet is a short to medium haul passenger plane and this particular model was manufactured in two thousand and seventeen can carry up to ninety eight passengers so this for the particular flight was in that full capacity the range is up to four thousand

six hundred kilometers for this model one hundred eighty six super jets are currently in service with various different lines. ok let's get some analysis now from mark weiss is a retired american airlines captain thanks for joining us here are not international mark and i was just speaking to our correspondent just want to get a bit more confirmation because we've had reports of a possible lightning strike and it's certainly sounding more credible now particularly if that passenger on the plane that testimony is to be believed. how surprised would you be about that line is these days equipped to deal with such circumstances of a lightning strike. first of all my condolences to everybody involved and certainly to the families. you know take a step back for a second modern airliners are made to fly through all sorts of weather taking a lightning strike is. rather routine in many ways most people don't really realize

that i've had over thirty years of you know an experience i've been. through by lightning a few times with really very little or no damage to the aircraft because they need to penetrate whether or from everything we're seeing at the moment and some unofficial videos which we can't show because we get to confirm and though it does seem as though the fire only breaks out upon landing the claims at this point the reports are that the lightning strike caused a loss of communication ability with traffic control is that sunlight something that is a possibility. well yes it could be but it really probably you know the radios the navigation equipment. and then the lightning strike should take another path rather than the navigation movement. on the aircraft now i will tell you that here in west there hasn't been a lot of. news generated on this yet so it's very hard to make any comments but

typically what i saw just on the internet was that the aircraft as you said really didn't seem to burst into flames into after it had a very hard landing on the runway and that seemed to ignite some of the flames through the winds again these are unfair for a verified source of information but they're all reports saying the transponder was changed to a signal that the flight had lost radio signal and then that was then subsequently changed to emergency situation then we get this emergency landing unverified video showing it on the second bounce bursting into flames now how how heavy a landing would it have to be for that to rupture fuel lines in some way to cause that file. well again take a step back what was the main issue. cause of the. mayday call

the first changing the transponder code to seventy seven hundred which means they had an emergency what is it what is the what the investigators are going to look at right now to tapes to the air traffic control center in the tower the tape on board the aircraft the cockpit voice recorder and certainly the flight data recorder is going to be critical. you know. i can't imagine a landing so hard that it's going to bend the way where you're going to have a rupture of a fuel tank unless you know some something to slug something in one of the engines but this is really really a stretch one of the different problems that a plane can and counter welds if so we're talking about less than half an hour after takeoff what are the different problems that you could face as a pilot. there's a myriad of situations you can with both engines operating did they have smoke or

fire in onboard the aircraft was there. smoke in the cockpit what was the emergency did they have that that's why it's really so critical to be able to listen to the noises the sounds the voice recordings and all the instrumentation parameters and see those parameters through the flight recorder and the flight the force recorder to see what happened it could be a lot of different things but it's also interesting that apparently they landed on the second approach if there was a fire aboard the aircraft you want to get that airplane on the ground as soon as possible well i think i played a lot i think that may actually be kind of slightly lost in translation but my understanding is i think that is basically a second bounce that the landing it bounced so hard and then came down to the sort of the second landing in that sense but the impacts considerable.

yeah it's certainly from the from the small video that i was able to see on the internet it's certainly seen that that was an extremely hard second bounce which damaged the undercarriage it may not have been able to take that stress and that may have caused the airplane undercarriage to collapse thereby either ripping an engine and igniting fuel and then causing the whole scenario that we saw play out because that's a layer of explain why we saw what appeared to be the hole the tail section of the plane in gulf in flames is that the fuel streaming back from the wings. it certainly appears to be again this is some very preliminary and the video was fuzzy hazy what have you but it certainly appears from the from the way the front part of the fuselage was still intact and the way the people were able to interest

that aircraft through the emergency exit that something probably ruptured whether it was the wind tank whether it was the engine pylon ripping into the wing causing that to happen that certainly is going to probably be the focus of attention and the stress put on the landing gear on that approach and he said at this point we really are. waiting to hear more kind of concrete information from an official investigation in the black the black box recorder and the sounds of the picked up but if we just stick to what we know it seems to be that radio contact was lost pretty early on is not alone a major problem for a pilot or is this just a case where ok we'll go now to. safety protocols. at that point is it a major concern or not. well there had to be some concern i mean first of all before they lost any of the electronics or of communications ability they did have the transponder squawk an emergency coach they had

a few codes as you said put in there but they had that ability to make that distress call did they make a distress call to the tower or departure control. again this is all going to be critical how did they handle that with a trained to handle these types of situations they're going to investigate regulatory agencies that are going to be investigating the accident are going to be looking at not only the structural components of the aircraft the manufacturer certification of the aircraft but the training of the pilots and they're going to look into the training records how much sleep they had fatigue was that an issue involved in this was whether involved in this you say it might have been passengers said that there was lightning and potentially had a lightning strike so all of these are going to come into play were they distracted the pilots tracked it from performing their protocol checklists those are the

things that the flight data recorder and the voice recorder are going to tell you and again take a look at an accident as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle each by themselves may not be the answer but when you put everything together you get a much clearer picture of what happens accidents don't generally happen from a single cause it's a chain of events and that's what they're trying to they're going to be putting together so that the next accident of the next time something like this happens this type of situations occur people will understand better how to handle them and find a marxist want to mention often unsung heroes i think cabin crew who will. largely responsible for the safety of passengers when an incident like this occurs it's been estimated that the people we believe thirty seven confirmed survivors at this point believe that they were evacuated in around a minute is that

a fairly efficient time for getting people off a plane in an emergency well thank you for bringing that up cabin crews often times don't don't get the recognition they deserve for the work that they do that they do and how their responsibility is to make sure that those passengers are taken care of safely and apparently there was a good cabin crew on that aircraft. you know this is going to be very critical typically globally the standard is ninety seconds to evacuate an aircraft that's in fact how they determine how many emergency exits an emergency doors will be needed on an aircraft is how you have accurate that aircraft in ninety seconds or less and as you said they did it in much less time than that so hats off to that crew for getting those people evacuated. market greatly appreciate your time and your

expertise thanks so much for coming on out international my guest is mark weiss with todd american airlines captain thank you thank you. and this is of course a developing story will keep you right up to date with latest information both here on our team to national on a website dot com. move on to today's other news and israeli air strikes on the gaza strip of now killed twenty three people according to palestinian media reports says israel claims that four of its civilians have died following a massive barrels of rockets fired from palestinian territory the sudden spike in violence between the two neighboring states is now seen two days of missiles exchanged.

the windows from the trucks from outside. that was flung as a result of the explosion. the i.d.f. also claims a prominent hamas leader was killed as a result of an asteroid his car was reportedly hit by rockets in an attack that also claimed a number of other lives and thus plans the i.d.f. for killing two pregnant women and the toddler television denies those claims made the sudden escalation of violence between the two states is what locals from both sides had to say about the flare. that there was a lot of bombing in the neighborhood work back to a lot of this street scene was indescribable people were afraid and terrified and

running and everyone was looking for their children nobody was able to see others and after the first rocket hit everyone started screaming children and adults in the building collapsed nobody was able to see one another only look to learn to leave it to those bigger than me to the generals that know the situation to do what they know and all we can do is to cross our fingers and that they will succeed i mean we're not called many more we do trust the army we do hope benjamin netanyahu will take care of it but we are really worried from the rockets. well the bomb into rockets from the gaza strip began last saturday morning several residential areas were hit mostly in the south of israel multiple sites in palestine with an targeted in retaliatory strikes as more details. his radius strikes continue to bombard gaza the israelis say that they targeting hamas and islamic jihad targets but among the offices that have been hit was the headquarters belonging to the turkish state

run media agency now the turkish president added one has slammed the incident and no doubt this will increase tensions between israel and turkey at the same time israel has resumed its policy of targeted assassinations killing the person responsible in the gaza strip for distributing the weight in funds that are the native to gaza this comes as israel saw on sunday its deadliest day in terms of casualties since the last israel gaza war back in two thousand and fourteen the south of the country is in a state of high lives businesses and schools will remain closed on monday and ways it is have been ordered to remain inside the bomb shelters here in tel aviv where i am with the some eighty kilometers to the north the municipality has open public bomb shelters and this comes as hamas threatens that if israel doesn't stop what it says is its aggression it will target tel aviv in the coming hours now we do expect

to see some kind of mediation if that's conducted by egypt in the coming hours this comes as israel stops fuel supplies to the gaza strip now this will have a diary faked on electricity inside the gaza don't forget that on monday morning the holy month of ramadan begins and for gazans this is reminiscent of the last gaza wall which saw a large pot of the wall happening during the month of ramadan on sunday night an israeli security cabinet meeting wrapped up with the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu telling the i.d.f. soldiers to keep up their attacks. this morning i instructed the i.d.f. to continue in terms of turning against terror targets in the gaza strip and to experiment its presence surrounding the gaza strip with a. forces artillery and troops we are operating and we will continue to do so to restore peace and security to residents in the south of the country and all of this common aids on the fourteenth of may with

a you have vision song face to full way some twenty thousand tourists are expected to arrive in the country the festival will be held here in tel aviv so every very tense situation here on both sides of the border coming as the united nations envoy to the region just calm and calls on both sides to lay down. i condemn the continuing to give look at from gaza enough palestinian israeli lives have been lost people injured houses damaged and destroyed it is time to deescalate and return to the understanding that the past few months before it's too late journalist garrie and political analyst mitchell barak gave us their views on the latest escalation between israel and gaza. both the hamas and islamic jihad are are excellent in using human shields you know launching their operations from schools and from apartment buildings and from civilian centers and hoping that the israelis

will not retaliate or that the israelis will be concerned with possible civilian casualties every civilian casualty is certainly a tragedy but the state of israel has to protect its citizens and has to protect its borders and for that some very very serious measures are being taken against the military infrastructure in gaza the government of gaza is the hamas it's a terror organization it's defined as a terror organization by both the united by both the european union and united states and against a terror organization everything goes so they keep testing israel along the way how many rockets can they fire how many civilian israelis can be killed before israel does something but israel has fully clean hands in this endeavor and will continue to pummel gaza and to destroy any terrorist infrastructure hopefully no civilians will be killed in the process but israel is protecting its population this is something that is. intensely and dr lee in the region of the time being

and this could in laws into a larger scale. by that israel is and intensity of will be seen between the two sides but you know is that israeli israeli air strikes and israeli attacks on the gaza strip have been used to be march more intense much more brutal much more ruston this against the palestinians israel has the most sophisticated army and the more sophisticated weaponry pinpoint attacks being carried out by israel for the time being and israel you. this is a very sophisticated technology military technology to attack palestinians the casualties among palestinians are very high and the palestinians are paying a very high price for. an israeli tank shelling against gaza that is

ongoing there is some kind of disproportionate disproportionate. scale there's a proportionate of attacks by palestinians and israel is. going to return to our breaking news story now that of a plane landing in flames at moscow's largest airport previously would telling you official numbers that the people the brink of well very sadly investigators have just had a very brief press conference i can tell you now confirming forty one people confirmed dead this particular aircraft an air flow plane burst into flames during an emergency landing at moscow's biggest ports the video we're about to show you now of the plane on fire on the runway i must warn you you may find this disturbing .

so it's been a few more facts that we know about this particular plane and this particular flight it was a sukhoi superjet plane operated by air of flot destination on this case was more months city in the far north of russia but soon after takeoff the crew send

a distress signal and then communication with traffic control was lost the plane reportedly made an aborted emergency landing at a second approach that resulted we believe in a hard landing which led to this deadly fire. this was a few more details this was an air of lot flight one forty nine two said two more months it departed the shuttle departure time was five fifty in the evening local time here in moscow and the initial report said that it was forced to turn back after there was a fire alert on board lots of information yet to be confirmed but from what we have gathered at the transponder was changed regionally to indicate that radio transmissions had been lost with air traffic control the transponder still allows them to send out a communication of sorts in a very form of a basic signal and then that transponder signal squawk was then subsequently

a few minutes late.