The Emergencies Ministry branch for Russia's Amur region said the An-24 plane rolled off the runway and broke apart when it tried to land Monday at Blagoveshchensk airport. It blamed strong winds and a heavy rain for the accident.
Blagoveshchensk is a city on the Amur River that separates Russia from China, some 5,600 kilometers (3,500 miles) east of Moscow.
The plane operated by IrAero was carrying 36 people from Irkutsk in Siberia to Khabarovsk in the Amur region.
The An-24, a two-engine turboprop, has been a mainstay of Soviet and then Russian airlines since the early 1960s.
