Police sift through the wreckage of the Russian-made An-12 cargo plane March 25 which crashed in a residential area on approach to Sri Lanka's only international airport, killing at least nine people, including six crew. Several houses were damaged when the plane, on a flight from Bangkok, crashed just short of the airport at Katunayake, some 21 km (13 miles) north of the capital Colombo, in blinding rain late on Friday. The dead included five Russian and one Sri Lankan crew and three people, including a child, who were killed on the ground.

AL/PB