Former USSR airliners seem to turn out more and more into Russian roulette.
Condolences to all families involved.
"More than 70 people, most of them Spanish peacekeeping forces who had been serving in Afghanistan, were killed when the Ukrainian plane they were travelling in crashed in north-west Turkey this morning.
It is believed that 74 people died when the aircraft, which belonged to a Ukrainian company, Sredizemnomorske, came down in thick fog while attempting to make a refuelling stop.
Turkish aviation officials said that the plane had been flying from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, to Zaragoza, in Spain, with a stop in the Black Sea port of Trabzon.
The Russian-made YAK-42 aircraft hit a mountain slope near the town of Macka, which is 50km (30 miles) south of Trabzon.
Officials at Spain's defence ministry said that 62 Spanish soldiers were among the victims. A statement said: "We can confirm that 62 Spanish soldiers returning from Afghanistan died in the crash."
Reports in Spain said that the army troops were from an engineers regiment that had finished a four-month spell in Afghanistan.
Turkish officials reported that 12 crew members had been aboard, and military personnel who reached the scene said that there were no survivors.
Aviation officials believe that the plane crashed as it made a third attempt to land at Trabzon airport in foggy conditions.
They said that the pilot had reported being unable to see the runway during two landing attempts, before the aircraft disappeared from radar screens at 4.45am.
Turkish soldiers retrieved more than 25 bodies from the wreckage, CNN-Turk television reported. The soldiers also found the plane's black box flight recorder.
Eyewitnesses said that most of the bodies recovered from the scene had been left "in pieces or dismembered" by the plane's explosion on impact.
Turkish soldiers discovered unexploded hand grenades among the wreckage. They evacuated the crash scene amid fears of a possible explosion, CNN-Turk said.
One witness said that the plane had been burning before it crashed. "When I looked at the skies I saw a burning airplane, then two minutes later I heard two big explosions," Ergin Koyu told the Anatolia news agency.
Local official Mehmet Akkaya told the same agency that there had been no sign of any survivors as rescuers rushed to the scene.
"We looked for injured but there were only burned or torn bodies. Most of the bodies were unrecognisable," he said."
Guardian Unlimited