Ukraine aircrash toll rises to 84

The plane ploughed across the airfield and exploded in a giant fireball

KIEV, Ukraine -- The death toll from the Ukraine air show disaster has risen to 84 after a 59-year-old woman died from her injuries six days after the tragedy.

Both pilots of the Sukhoi Su-27 ejected safely before the jet clipped the ground and tore through the crowd, exploding in flames in the world's worst air show accident, last Saturday.

Sixty-nine casualties, 20 of them children, are still being treated in hospital after the disaster in Lviv, western Ukraine.

Eight remain in a critical condition, the emergencies ministry said in a statement on Friday.

The prosecutor general has detained four top military officials in connection with the crash.

He also said the pilots, who were still being treated in hospital, were partly to blame.

CNN NewsPass VIDEO Authorities say military to blame for allowing spectators in the path of a jet that crashed (July 29) Play video   MORE STORIES • Safety rules have tightened  • Eyewitness: Crash horror    EXTRA INFORMATION Gallery: Images of the crash  • Facts: The Sukhoi Su-27  • Timeline: Air show crashes

The death toll rose the day after Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma publicly blamed the military for the disaster.

Kuchma questioned on Thursday why scarce defence funding was used to finance the Lviv air show and has promised to push ahead with reform of the military. (Story)

He has sacked the country's air force chief and the head of the armed forces, but he refused to accept the resignation of his defence minister.

Speaking in Sevastopol, he said: "How is it possible to understand when the army, working with insufficient funds, completing difficult work for our countrymen, spends its money not on raising the defence capability of the state, but on an entertainment show?

"I want to note that the guilty must be punished. And just those, those with direct and full responsibility for the tragedy. Not the second-class, little men."

Kuchma said the Lviv tragedy -- officially the world's worst air show disaster -- and an explosion in a mine in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday that killed at least 19, was damaging the country. (Mine disaster)

He said: "I am sure the incomplete reform process in the military and the difficulties of that work made the tragedies of recent times possible. We have to draw a line under this once and for all."

Following the Lviv disaster, Ukraine's air force chief Viktor Strelnykov, and Petro Shulyak, the head of the armed forces and acting defence minister, were sacked.

But Kuchma said on Thursday said he had not accepted the resignation of Defence Minister Volodymyr Shkidchenko.

Strelnykov was quoted by Interfax-Ukraine news agency as saying the pilots had failed to carry out orders.