The crash of a Flydubai Boeing 737 passenger jet at the Rostov airport on Saturday morning has claimed the lives of 61 people, a high-ranking Emergency Situations Ministry official said.

"A Flydubai Boeing 737-800 en route from Dubai to Rostov-on-Don crashed at 3:50 a.m. today while on the second approach to land at the Rostov-on-Don airport," Viktor Yatsunenko, the chief of the ministry's national crisis management center, said at a teleconference on Saturday.

"Preliminary findings indicate that there were 55 passengers and six crewmembers onboard the plane. Unfortunately, all of them have been killed," he said.