Most Suspect Terrorists
As Russia mourned the 89 people killed Tuesday when two
airliners crashed within three minutes of each other, it looks
more and more like terrorists brought both aircraft down.
Russia's Federal Security Service -- which grew out of the KGB
and is in charge of the crash investigations -- now says traces of
explosives have been found in the wreckage of at least one of the
jetliners that went down Tuesday night. Also, investigators say in
each crash, one body hasn't been claimed. In each crash, it's the
body of a woman with a Chechen name. Authorities now theorize the
women might have carried explosives onto the aircraft inside
their own bodies.
Deep in their hearts, many Russians believe they know what
happened. "Of course this series of events cannot seriously be
ascribed to coincidence," says Sergei Kazyonnov, a senior expert at
the independent Institute of National Security and Strategic
Research in Moscow, also quoted by the Canadian Press. "Everyone
understands that this is a political situation."
Another indicator that the crashes were not accidents: Hours
after the planes went down, ITAR-Tass reports a radical Muslim
web site claimed responsibility for bombing them, saying it did so
because of atrocities committed by Russians in the breakaway
Chechen Republic.
The two aircraft lifted off within a half-hour of each other
Tuesday night. Both departed Moscow's Domodedovo Airport. The Sibir
Airlines Tu-154 carrying 46 people was on its way to the Black Sea
resort town of Sochi. The second aircraft, a regional airline's
Tu-134, was headed to Volgograd with 43 people on board.
The Tu-154 went down near the southern Russian city of
Rostov-on-Don, killing all on board. The Tu-134 crashed south of
Moscow, near the town of Tula -- again, killing all on board.
The Tu-134 was inverted when it impacted the ground, according
to Russian investigators. They took that as a sign of possible
pilot error or even mechanical failure. In both cases, none of the
bodies recovered were burned -- which would have been an indication
of a fire or explosion just before the aircraft went down.
The twin crashes come a month after Col-General Yury Solovyov, a
senior air defense official, warned that a commercial aircraft
could be hijacked at any of Moscow's airports and reach the Kremlin
within just 40 seconds.
A statement posted on Sibir Airlines' web site says the flight
crew aboard the Tu-154 triggered a hijacking alarm just before it
went down. At first, Russian officials denied that. Later, however,
they changed their story, admitting that a distress call was
received from the Sibir Airlines plane.
If the two disasters were linked to terrorists, they would fit a
pattern set by Chechen separatists, according to Russian news
reports. Chechen rebels have bombed subways, trains buildings and
politicians. The Chechen president, Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed in a
bombing three months ago.
That murder prompted new elections in Chechnya. Again, terrorism
experts in Russia believe the two jetliners might have been brought
down as part of an escalated terror campaign aimed at disrupting
Sunday's Chechen elections.
"Russia now has a Sept. 11," presidential envoy Vladimir
Yakovlev told Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency on Thursday,
confirming Russians' worst fears, that the twin downings were
indeed the work of terrorists.
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