Terrorism?

[kat2220]

Russian Plane Crashes, Another Disappears

Updated 8:55 PM ET August 24, 2004


By STEVE GUTTERMAN

MOSCOW (AP) - A Russian airliner crashed and a second disappeared from radar about the same time Tuesday night after both planes took off from the Moscow airport, raising fears that terrorism was involved.

There was no word on survivors among the 89 people believed to be aboard the planes, which left from Moscow's Domodedovo airport, Russian news agencies reported.

President Vladimir Putin ordered an investigation by the nation's top intelligence agency, and security was tightened at airports across the country.

Authorities have expressed concern that separatist rebels in the breakaway republic of Chechnya could carry out attacks linked to this Sunday's presidential election there. Rebels have been blamed for a series of terror strikes that have claimed hundreds of lives.

Chechnya's previous president, the pro-Russian Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed by a bombing in May.

Witnesses reported seeing an explosion before the first plane crashed about 125 miles south of Moscow, and authorities were not ruling out terrorism, the agency said.



The Interfax news agency said emergency workers spotted a fire about 600 miles south of Moscow in the region where the second plane went missing.

Putin ordered the Federal Security Service to investigate, Russian news agencies reported. The service is the successor to the Soviet-era KGB.

A Tu-134 airliner with 43 people aboard crashed in the Tula region, 125 miles south of Moscow, at about 10:56 p.m. Tuesday, Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Marina Ryklina said. She said the plane was carrying 35 passengers and a crew of eight.

ITAR-Tass reported that the plane belonged to Volgograd-based airline Volga-Aviaexpress and was being piloted by the company's director. Rescuers found the jet's tail near the village of Buchalki, Interfax reported.

A Tu-154 with 46 people aboard lost contact with flight officials about three minutes later near Rostov-on-Don, about 600 miles south of Moscow, Ryklina said. The jet belonged to the Russian airline Sibir, which said the plane disappeared from radar screens at about 11 p.m. Tuesday, Interfax reported. There were 38 passengers and a crew of eight aboard.

The Interfax news agency later said emergency workers were headed to the region near the Ukrainian border to see if the fire was from a crash.

Earlier, ITAR-Tass reported that emergency officials said the second plane crashed.

Quoting an unnamed air traffic official in Moscow, ITAR-Tass said authorities were not ruling out terrorism. The agency also reported that witnesses said they saw an explosion before the Tula region crash.

The plane that crashed near Tula was headed to the southern city of Volgograd, while the plane that disappeared was flying to the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, where Putin was vacationing, ITAR-Tass reported.

When Russia's U.N. Ambassador Andrey Denisov was told of the initial report of two near-simultaneous crashes, he said, "Now we have to see if there's terrorism."

In Washington, a senior U.S. State Department official said, "We are obviously concerned by the news. We're following developments closely and trying to determine the facts."

The U.S. Homeland Security Department was monitoring the situation but was not implementing any additional security measures in the United States, spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said.

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

[esorlxaw]

and the second plane went down eight minutes later...and it gave out a hijacking code before they lost contact....I read that on the netscape homepage, but it seems pretty interesting/disturbing, of course, Russia isn't exactly as tight on security as america is.

 

[kat2220]

By MIKE ECKEL

BUCHALKI, Russia (AP) - Russian emergency workers searched heaps of twisted metal and tall grass Wednesday for clues about what caused two airliners to plunge to earth within minutes of each other, killing all 89 people aboard. Officials said one jet sent a hijack distress signal, raising fears terrorists had struck.

Flight recorders from both planes were found and taken to Moscow for investigation, ITAR-Tass reported, indicating the question of what caused the twin disasters soon could be answered.

Russian security authorities said that explosives specialists were still working at the scene of the crashes. They reported that terrorism remained a possible cause, although there was no evidence so far that terrorists were behind the tragedies.

Federal Security Service spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko said investigators were still questioning airport officials and airline and security employees at Domodedovo Airport, from which both flights left 45 minutes apart.



The airport on Moscow's far south side operates a single terminal that serves both international and domestic flights. Both flights were serviced at and left from the domestic section.

The service, known as the FSB, is a successor agency to the KGB. Officials there said they were investigating other possibilities such as technical failures, the use of poor quality fuel, breaches of fueling regulations and pilot error. Rain and thunder was reported in the regions where both crashes occurred.

Rebels fighting a protracted war for independence for Chechnya, the troubled southern Russian province, have been blamed for a series of terror strikes that have claimed hundreds of lives in Russia in recent years. But rebel representative Akhmed Zakayev told Russia's Ekho Moskvy radio from London that Chechen forces and rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov were not connected to the crashes.

Russian officials had expressed concern that separatists in the war-ravaged republic might carry out attacks ahead of a regional election Sunday to replace its pro-Moscow president who was killed in a May bombing.

A Sibir airlines Tu-154 jet, carrying 46 people, took off from Moscow's newly redeveloped Domodedovo airport at 9:35 p.m. Tuesday and the other plane, a Tu-134 carrying 43 people, left 40 minutes later, according to state-run Rossiya television. The Tu-134 was headed to the southern city of Volgograd, while the other plane was flying to the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, where President Vladimir Putin is vacationing.

Volgograd is an industrial city on the Volga River and was formerly known as Stalingrad. It was the scene of one of World War II's bloodiest battles, in which the Russians turned back German troops that were advancing on oil fields at the Caspian Sea.

Putin returned to Moscow Wednesday evening and met with chief prosecutor Vladimir Ustinov, who told him authorities were considering terrorism, technical problems or human error as possible causes of the crashes. Putin announced that Thursday would be a day of mourning, the Interfax news agency reported.

The planes disappeared from radar screens about 11:00 p.m., and by early Wednesday morning, the wreckage of both had been found _ with no survivors. Domodedovo airport said in a statement that both planes "went through the standard procedure of preparation for flight ... (and) the procedures were carried out properly."

Uncertainty over the cause of the crashes came after Sibir (which means Siberia) said that it was notified that its jet had activated a hijack or seizure signal shortly before disappearing from radar screens. Officials said the crew of the other plane gave no indication that anything was wrong, but witnesses on the ground reported hearing a series of explosions.

"There were three loud bangs on the window, like someone knocking," said Nikolai Gorokhov, a local resident who was in his home at the time of the crash.

Putin ordered an investigation by the FSB, and security was tightened at Russian airports, where extra security officers and sniffer dogs were called in to check passengers and luggage, as well as other transport hubs and public places. The FSB sent experts to determine if explosions caused the crashes, Interfax reported.

At about the same time the Tu-154 disappeared, the Tu-134 airliner crashed in the Tula region, about 125 miles south of Moscow, officials said. ITAR-Tass reported that the authorities believe the Tu-134 fell from an altitude of 32,800 feet. Wreckage of the Sochi-bound Tu-154 was found in the Rostov region, about 600 miles south of Moscow about nine hours after it disappeared.

Rescuers quickly found the Tu-134's wreckage _ a heap of metal lying upside down in a large hay field, its tail severed from the fuselage. An AP reporter saw one body bag lying near the tail, holding a charred corpse. Emergency Ministry officers wearing camouflage and red berets stood shoulder-to-shoulder and combed the tall grass for pieces of the broken plane.

Maj. Gen. Gennady Skachkov of the Emergency Situations Ministry told AP at the scene near the village of Buchalki that most of the bodies were still in the cabin, but several had been thrown into the field. He refused to speculate on the cause of the crash but said the crew had given no warning.

Officials made conflicting statements about whether the signal from the other jet indicated a hijacking or another severe problem on the aircraft.

The Interfax and ITAR-Tass news agencies later quoted an unnamed law enforcement source as saying that the signal was an SOS and that no other signals were sent.

Oleg Yermolov, deputy director of the Interstate Aviation Committee, said that it is impossible to judge what is behind the signal, which merely indicates "a dangerous situation onboard" and can be triggered by the crew during a hijacking or a potentially catastrophic technical problem.

Sibir Airlines, however, seemed to hint at foul play, saying on its Web site that it "does not rule out the theory of a terrorist attack." The airline is one of Russia's largest.

The Emergency Situation Ministry's Rostov regional chief Viktor Shkareda told AP the plane apparently broke up in the air and that wreckage was spread over an area of some 25-30 miles, but the fuselage and tail lay a few hundred yards apart at the edge of a forest. Bodies lay near the plane, but most of the victims' bodies were trapped in the mangled fuselage. The crash was found near Gluboky, a village north of the regional capital Rostov-on-Don.

Siber said the Tu-134 belonged to small regional airline Volga-Aviaexpress and was being piloted by the company's director.

Interfax quoted a Domodedovo airport spokesman as saying no foreigners were on the passenger lists for either plane. But a spokesman for the Israeli embassy said an Israeli citizen, David Coen, was on the Volgograd-bound jet.

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

[kat2220]

By MARIA DANILOVA

MOSCOW (AP) - A top Russian official acknowledged Thursday what many citizens already suspected _ that terrorism was the most likely cause of two jetliners crashing minutes apart, a feeling reflected in a newspaper headline warning that "Russia now has a Sept. 11."

A day after officials stressed there were many possibilities besides terrorism, presidential envoy Vladimir Yakovlev told Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency that the main theory "all the same remains terrorism."

Yakovlev said the planes' flight recorders provide no clues to the disaster. He said both boxes had shut off abruptly without any indication of trouble, a sign U.S. aviation experts said was strong evidence of explosions.

Also, Transport Minister Igor Levitin confirmed Sibir airlines' report that its crew activated an emergency signal shortly before the plane disappeared from radar. Visiting the crash site, however, he said that details were slim because "no verbal confirmation from the crew was received" saying what the problem was.



Officials previously said there was no indication of trouble from a Volga-Aviaexpress airliner that also crashed late Tuesday, although people on the ground reported hearing a series of explosions.

Russian media also raised questions about a possible link between the crashes and an explosion a few hours earlier at a bus stop on a road leading to Domodedovo airport, where the two doomed planes took off. Without citing evidence, the reports suggested the blast, which wounded four people, might have been an effort to distract attention.

Suspicions of terrorism came after warnings from officials that separatists might plan attacks before an election this Sunday in Chechnya to replace the war-torn region's assassinated pro-Kremlin president. The rebels have made attacks in Moscow and other cities, hijacked planes outside Russia and allegedly staged suicide bombings.

"I am inclined to think that it is a terrorist act, because there are too many coincidences," said Ruben Suryaninov, an elderly retiree. "What needs to happen so that two planes going from the same airport would bang at the same moment?"

"It's too suspicious," agreed Natalia Kozhelupova, a physicist who was out on a national day of mourning for the 89 people killed in the crashes. Russia's tricolor flag flew at half-staff and television canceled entertainment programs.

Despite Yakovlev's statement about terrorism, the government was still officially investigating all possibilities _ bombs, hijackers, mechanical failure, bad fuel and human error. Officials said no evidence had been found pointing to terrorism, and no one has claimed to have caused the crashes.

The government had hoped the jetliners' flight data recorders would shed some light, but Yakovlev told state-run First Channel that experts found the boxes in both planes shut off before indicating any problems.

Yakovlev, the president's envoy for southern Russia, where one of the planes crashed, said the recorders "turned off immediately" _ an indication "that something happened very fast."

Bill Waldock, aviation safety professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona, said a sudden stoppage of a plane's two recorders indicates that its electrical system was cut. "An explosion could interrupt electrical power," he said, adding that it was extremely unlikely that another problem would cause four boxes in two planes to quit abruptly.

If something went wrong with a plane's mechanical or electrical systems, "more protracted data would show up," Waldock said. The ****pit voice recorder would pick up pilots' conversations as they dealt with the problem, while the flight data recorder would note such information as altitude, air speed, heading and vertical acceleration.

Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, also said the abrupt shutoffs mostly likely point to explosions. But raised the possibility that the recorders weren't working properly.

"Given that Russian regional aviation has never been known for its maintenance standards, it would not surprise me that the FDRs and CVRs were not working correctly, if at all," Goelz said.

The planes _ a Sibir Tu-154 with 46 aboard and a Volga-Aviaexpress Tu-134 with 43 people _ disappeared from radar almost simultaneously around 11 p.m. Tuesday. The Tu-134 was headed to the southern city of Volgograd and the other plane to the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, where President Vladimir Putin was vacationing. They had taken off about 40 minutes apart.

A government commission appointed to investigate traveled Thursday to the site where the Tu-134 crashed, about 120 miles south of Moscow. Emergency crews had already completed their work there, but others continued to check the wreckage of the Tu-154 a few hundred miles south.

"There is still no clear-cut concept of what occurred, because the procedure of deciphering the data recorders will be conducted more than once," Levitin, the transport minister and head of the commission, was quoted as saying by ITAR-Tass.

Oleg Panteleyev, an independent aviation expert in Russia, said that just because no clear evidence of terrorism had been found, didn't mean that wasn't the cause.

Any other explanation "seems to be purely impossible," he told The Associated Press. "But then again, absolutely incredible things can happen in life."

Many ordinary Russians have ingrained doubts about the government's candor after the confused and contradictory reports on the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk in 2000 and the still-murky 2002 seizure of a Moscow theater by Chechen rebels.

"I never trust what the authorities are saying, but in this case, I don't know _ it could have been an accident or a terrorist act," said Yevgeny Skepner, a 37-year-old computer programmer.

Still, Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst who is often critical of the government, said Moscow would have nothing to gain in covering up a terror attack.

"For the companies, the aviation industry, society and Russia as a whole, it would be better ... because otherwise it means that things are really bad here _ we have bad planes that crash to the ground one after another," he said. "The fact that it is not being called a terrorist act, means they have no such evidence ... because hiding a terrorist act is impossible."

Panteleyev disagreed. "To miss such a major terrorist act for the security services means to acknowledge their impotence," he said.

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press.