A RUSSIAN passenger plane has crashed killing all 71 people on board, including a five-year-old girl, after the engine “exploded” in mid-air.

Dramatic footage from a resident’s backyard shows an explosion in the air, shortly after the plane left Moscow airport.

It is unclear if the fireball eruption seen in the video is the main body of the aircraft.

Flight #6W703, an Antonov An-148 plane operated by the domestic Saratov Airlines, was flying to Orsk, a city in the Urals, and crashed in the Ramensky district outside Moscow

minutes after taking off from Moscow’s Domodedovo International Airport on Sunday.

Russia’s transportation minister Maxim Sololov said “no one has survived this crash”.

The airliner crashed shortly after vanishing from radar screens.

A number of victims have been identified in reports, including flight attendant Anastasia Slavinskaya, 29, and Viktoria Koval and second officer Sergey Gambaryan, 34.

Two children, Evgeny Livanov, 12, and Nadezhda Krasova, five, and teenager Ilya Poletayev also died in the crash.

One witness claimed there was an “explosion” while the plane was still in the air, The Sun reports.

News agencies said witnesses in the village of Argunovo, which is about 80km from Moscow, saw a burning plane falling from the sky.

“The explosion was huge. Everything was shaking,” a witness told Life Shot news.

“I heard the noise of jet turbines. Then silence.”

The explosion led to “windows trembling” on the ground, he said.

Other media reported that the wreckage of the plane was spread over a wide area around the crash site.

The transport ministry said several causes for the crash are being considered, including weather conditions and human error.

Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said that the bodies were so badly damaged that identification would have to be by DNA matching from devastated family members.

Investigators said the crew did not report any technical problems before the disaster.

The governor of the Orenburg region, where the plane was flying to, told Russian media that “more than 60 people” onboard the plane were from the region.

President Vladimir Putin offered his condolences to the families of those on board.

“The president offers his profound condolences to those who lost their relatives in the crash,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Mr Putin has postponed a planned trip to Sochi to closely monitor the investigation of the crash.

State television aired a video of the crash site, showing parts of the wreckage in the snow. Russia has seen record high snowfalls in recent days and visibility was reportedly poor.

Temperatures were around minus 5 degrees Celsius with periodic snowfall at the time of the crash.

Russian media reported that the emergency services were unable to reach the crash site by road and that rescue workers walked to the scene on foot.

Emergency services said in a statement that more than 150 rescue workers were deployed to the site.

Officials ordered that drones should be used to search for bodies.

Prosecutors opened an investigation into Saratov Airlines following the crash.

The Russian-made plane was seven-years-old and bought by Saratov Airlines from another Russian airline a year ago.

Local media website Ural56.ru in the Orenburg region showed footage of distressed relatives at Orsk airport, where the plane was due to land. It also reported that psychologists have arrived at the provincial Russian airport.

Plane crashes are common in Russia, where airlines often operate ageing aircraft in testing flying conditions.

A light aircraft crashed in November in Russia’s far east, killing six people on board.

In December 2016 a military plane carrying Russia’s famed Red Army Choir crashed after taking off from the Black Sea resort of Sochi, killing all 92 people on board.

The choir had been due to give a concert to Russian troops operating in Syria. Pilot error was blamed for that crash.

In March 2016, all 62 passengers died when a FlyDubai jet crashed in bad weather during an aborted landing at Rostov-on-Don airport.