Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 2 spoke by phone with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to discuss the mid-air collision in which 71 people, mostly Russian children, were killed over Southern Germany, the Kremlin said.

Putin spoke in favour of a joint Russia-German investigation into the accident, in which a Russian Tupolev 154 jet crashed into a Boeing cargo plane.

Schroeder for his part expressed his condolences over the accident, which was the worst such air disaster since two planes collided in India, in 1996 killing 349 people.