The exact cause of the pre-dawn crash is under investigation, but government spokesman Vladimir Markin said "a technical breakdown" was a likely cause.
Markin said in televised remarks that the failure of one of the Boeing 737-500's two engines may have caused the plane to come down, The Associated Press reported.
Airline officials have said there is no indication of terrorism.
"We think it's very doubtful that it was the result of a terrorist attack, because at the scene, there were no traces of explosives as we know for now," said Lev Koshlyakov, Deputy Director General of Aeroflot.
It took firefighters more than two hours to extinguish the blazing wreckage. When the sun rose, pieces of the Aeroflot jet were strewn about the railroad tracks.
"It slammed in front of my house, and there was a huge flame," an unidentified woman in Perm told Russian state television. "It looked like fireworks."
She said the impact of the crash "threw me across my sheets.... Then my daughter ran in from the next room and asked if a war had started."
She and other witnesses said they saw the aircraft burning before it came crashing down.
"It looked like a comet," she said.
The jet was en route to Perm from Moscow when the pilots lost communication with air traffic control just before landing about 3:10 a.m. (2110 GMT), an Aeroflot official said. He described the weather at the time as "mediocre."
The public safety minister for the Perm region said investigators were combing a 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) area, including homes and railways
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