newsnerd99

FROM:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5810127/
INVOLVING THESE AIRCRAFT FOR SURE:
http://www.airliners.net/open.file/604674/M/
http://www.airliners.net/open.file/645681/M/


BUCHALKI, Russia - A Russian airliner crashed and another apparently broke up in the air almost simultaneously after they took off from the same Moscow airport Tuesday night, officials said, killing all 89 people aboard and raising fears of a terrorist attack.

Authorities said rescuers found wreckage from a Tu-154 jet, which was carrying at least 46 people, about nine hours after it issued a distress signal and disappeared from radar screens over the Rostov region some 600 miles south of Moscow.

At about the same time that plane disappeared, a Tu-134 airliner carrying 43 people crashed in the Tula region, about 125 miles south of Moscow, officials said. Emergency officials said there were no survivors from either plane.

Officials made conflicting statements about whether the signal from the Tu-154 indicated a hijacking or another severe problem on the aircraft, and there was bad weather overnight in both areas.

President Vladimir Putin ordered an investigation by the nation’s main intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, and security was tightened at airports across the country.

The planes had left Moscow’s Domodedovo airport within 40 minutes of each other Tuesday night and disappeared from radar screens about 11:00 p.m, officials said.

Linked to war in Chechnya?
Authorities have expressed concern that separatists in war-ravaged Chechnya could carry out attacks linked to this Sunday’s election to replace the region’s pro-Moscow president, who was killed by a bombing in May. Rebels have been blamed for a series of terrorist strikes that have claimed hundreds of lives in Russia in recent years.

Moderate Chechen separatists denied any role in the crashes.

“Our government has nothing to do with terrorist attacks. Our attacks only target the military. This is part of the Russian propaganda plan to besmirch the struggle of the Chechen people,” Farouq Tubulat, a spokesman for Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov, told Al-Jazeera television.

Witnesses reported seeing an explosion before the first plane crashed about 125 miles south of Moscow, and suspicions of terrorist involvement were compounded by the reports that the Tu-154 airliner that went missing in southern Russia’s Rostov region issued a signal indicating the plane was being seized.

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.

But 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 during a hijacking or a potentially catastrophic technical problem.

Interfax reported that emergency workers spotted a fire in the Rostov region, where the Tu-154 went missing. But rainy weather hampered the search efforts and it took hours before any wreckage was found. A flight data recorder from the plane was recovered, Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said, according to Interfax.

The regional Emergency Situations Ministry 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. Body parts have also been found along with fragments of the plane, Interfax quoted federal Emergency Situations Ministry as saying. It said the parts were found near Gluboky, a village north of the regional capital Rostov-on-Don.

Witnesses on the ground saw an explosion on board the second plane just before it crashed near Tula.

“Around 11 p.m., give or take five minutes, there was this strange noise in the sky, then this torn-up book fell onto our garage,” a local man told NTV television, holding up the book with its tattered pages.

Shkareda said there were 52 people aboard the plane, while emergency officials in Moscow put the number of passengers and crew at 46.

In the Tula region, rescuers found fragments of the Tu-134 jet’s tail near the village of Buchalki. Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Marina Ryklina said later there were no survivors.

At about the same time that the Tu-134 crashed, the Tu-154 lost contact with flight controllers, Ryklina said. Interfax, citing Russia’s Interstate Aviation Committee, said there were 44 passengers and an unknown number of crew abroad.

The Tu-154 took off from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport at 9:35 p.m. Tuesday and the other plane left 40 minutes later, state-run Rossiya television reported.

The Tu-154 belonged to the Russian airline Sibir, which said that the plane had been in service since 1982.

“We are considering an act of terror as one possibility, especially after we received an automatically generated telegram from the Sochi air control center that the plane had been hijacked," a Sibir spokesman told Reuters.

Quoting unnamed aviation officials and security experts, Russian news agencies also said authorities were not ruling out terrorism and suspicions were heightened by the fact that the two planes disappeared around the same time.

In Washington, a U.S. official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Tuesday evening, said it was the understanding of American officials that the two Russian planes disappeared within four minutes of each other, which “in and of itself is suspicious.”

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.

ITAR-Tass reported that the authorities believe the Tu-134 fell from an altitude of 32,800 feet. It said the plane belonged to small regional airline Volga-Aviaexpress and was being piloted by the company’s director, and quoted dispatchers as saying there were 34 passengers and seven crew aboard. Ryklina put the numbers at 35 and eight — a total of 43.

Interfax quoted a Domodedovo airport spokesman as saying there were no foreigners on the passenger lists for either plane.

Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu told Russian television that flight recorders from both planes had been recovered.

Authorities said the Tu-134 was headed to the southern city of Volgograd, where Volga-Aviaexpress is based, while the plane that crashed in the Rostov region was flying to the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, where Putin is vacationing.

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.”

Raising that possibility, NBC News Moscow bureau chief Tom Bonifield reported that “the war in Chechnya has raised, off and on since 1994, a real problem for Russia.”

A series of deadly explosions in recent years has claimed hundreds of lives in blasts that have been blamed mostly on Chechen separatist rebels.

“We've seen repeated attacks — including here in Moscow — that have been caused by Chechen rebels," Bonifield said, adding that Russian transportation officials “are fairly rigorous about protecting their aviation industry.”

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