MOSCOW, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Bad weather conditions were blamed for the Armenian A-320 passenger airliner crash in the Black Sea, killing all 113 people on board early Wednesday morning, Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said.

    Viktor Beltsov, the ministry spokesman, said the plane approached the airport two times. Bad weather conditions aborted the first landing attempt and then the plane fell with a steep bank during the second landing approach.

    The Airbus A-320 of the Armenian airline belonging to the air company Armavia took off at 1:47 a.m. local time (2047 GMT Tuesday) from the Armenian capital of Yerevan to Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi.

    An air traffic controller warned the crew about the bad weather in Sochi, and the crew decided to return to the home airport, said representatives of the Armavia company.

    However, a new weather forecast radioed on board said weather conditions were improving, thus the plane continued the flight.

    When the plane was approaching the Adler airport, about 30 km southeast of Sochi, weather conditions sharply worsened, and the pilots had to make a second landing approach. It plunged to a 300-meter depth as it fell in an area located five km from the Adler airport.

    Then, the plane vanished from radar screens at about 2:15 a.m. Moscow time (2215 GMT Tuesday).

    Weather conditions were deteriorating in the area of an ongoing search and rescue operation, Beltsov was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying.

    The plane's flight data and voice recorders have not been found yet.

    All of the 113 people on board, including six children and eight crews, were reported to be killed, among whom, 38 bodies including a dead girl were found after the crash, Beltsov said.

    Eight bodies have been taken to a morgue of Sochi for identification, chief of the city administration's information department Mikhail Konstantinov said.

    According to the list of passengers placed in the hall of the international airport Zvartnots of Yerevan, 28 Russians were aboard the crashed jet.

    But "updated information which came from the Russian embassy in Yerevan" showed that the passenger plane carried 26 Russian citizens, Russian Foreign Ministry deputy spokesman Andrei Krivtsov said.

    Psychologists of the ministry's center for emergency psychological care will begin to work with relatives of crash victims soon.

    Andrei Agadzhanov, deputy commerce director of the Armavia company, said the plane was in perfect technical condition.

    Meanwhile, first deputy director of the company Ashkharbask Kalantara said the plane had undergone a preflight check made by the Yerevan personnel of the Sabena technical Belgian aircraft technical service company.

    "The plane probably got caught in a tornado or the accident would not have happened so suddenly," Kalantara was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency.

    The air disaster was a great shock to Armenia. People say they experienced a shock similar to the one in July 1975, when a Yak-40 plane crashed on the way from Yerevan to Batumi. Enditem