Moscow/Kiev - A Russian Boeing 737 landed with its landing gear up on Thursday, suffering substantial damage but leaving passengers and crew unharmed.

The aircraft operated by the Russian airline KD Avia made the landing at the main airport of the Baltic port city Kaliningrad after a uneventful flight from Barcelona, Spain.

Moscow - The tragedy of the Russian school accident when five schoolgirls were killed in a stairwell collapse deepened Thursday when it became known that their teacher committed suicide.

Russian police were cited by the Interfax agency as saying that the teacher, 43 and herself the mother of two children, hanged herself.

The director of the school, located in the Orenburg district, 1,500 kilometres south-east of Moscow, had described how the teacher was "completely devastated" by Wednesday's stairwell collapse.

Besides the five schoolgirls in the 11th grade, six other youngsters were injured in the accident.

Moscow  - At least five students were killed when a school stairwell collapsed, a spokesman for the Russian Civil Defence Ministry said Wednesday.

Tbilisi/Moscow - EU observers started their mission Wednesday to monitor the Russo-Georgian ceasefire agreement one and half months after conflict flared between the two countries over Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Russian troops still in Georgia prevented the observers from entering the security zone they set up around South Ossetia.

"It is not a categorical ban on the EU mission; it's just that the details of the monitoring mission have not been cleared up yet," a Russian military spokesman told Interfax news agency.

Moscow/Tbilisi  - The European Union chief diplomat Javier Solana met with Georgian leaders in Tbilisi on Tuesday and said he expects Russia to meet its obligation to pull it forces out of the buffer zone areas around Abkhazia and South Ossetia by October 10.

In talks coming on the eve of the start of the EU observer mission (EUMM) in Georgia, Solana insisted on Russia fulfilling its treaty commitment to pull its forces out of the two renegade Georgian provinces.

Moscow/Tbilisi  - The European Union observer mission was preparing to begin its operations in Georgia in the face of a Russian decision not to permit them to operate in Georgia's renegade provinces Abkhazia and South Ossetia despite an August promise seemingly allowing it.

"We are assuming that the Russians too will hold to the agreements," said a spokeswoman for the mission Tuesday in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

The EU observer mission is formally to begin its work on Wednesday.