Posted on 08/26/2004 12:14:30 AM PDT by monkapotamus
Russia Mourns Dead in Air Crash, Questions Cause
By Nathan Pettingill
UZLOVAYA, Russia (Reuters) - Russia on Thursday observed a day of mourning for at least 89 people who died in a mysterious double air disaster, which some fear could have been a terrorist attack ahead of a key election in rebel Chechnya.
Flags flew half-mast and comedies were pulled from theaters and television schedules as relatives of those who died in the Tuesday's still unexplained plane disasters arrived at the crash sites to help identify the dead.
Russian media scorned official statements that the two plane crashes within minutes of one another were the result of technical fault or human error.
"Russia now has its own September 11," said the headline of a frontpage article in Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily, in reference to the 2001 suicide attacks on the United States involving four hijacked commercial planes, which killed about 3,000 people.
One aircraft, a Tu-134 flying to Volgograd, went down near the town of Tula south of Moscow. Moments later a Tu-154 bound for Sochi crashed near the southern city of Rostov-on-Don.
The planes, which crashed 500 miles apart, both left from Moscow's Domodedovo airport.
Sibir Airlines said the pilots of the Tu-154, which had 43 passengers and crew on board, triggered a hijack alert just before their plane crashed.
It also said the fact the wreckage of the plane was scattered across several square kilometers (miles) indicated the plane might have been destroyed by a mid-air explosion.
Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov said he could not rule out a terrorist act or human and technical errors at a Wednesday meeting with President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites), who rushed to Moscow after breaking off his holiday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
But a spokesman for FSB security service said that initial investigations showed no reasons to believe the planes had been victims of an attack and focused more on possible faults with the planes or human error.
Investigators pinned hope on flight recorders, which they started deciphering on Thursday, to explain what had happened.
The four recorders were retrieved from two countryside sites where slabs of twisted metal, seats and clothing were shipped to Moscow late on Wednesday.
"The special laboratories of the Intergovernmental Aviation Committee are equipped with all the necessary technical means," a representative of the committee told Itar-Tass news agency.
"(But) everything depends on how well the recordings have been saved."
The incidents came against a backdrop of mounting violence in Chechnya, where Moscow has been battling separatists for a decade.
Rebels launched a major raid in the local capital Grozny last week and promised more to come ahead of a presidential election in the region they had vowed to disrupt.
Moderate Chechen separatists denied any role in the crashes.
But the fact officials were so coy about any possible link between the crashes and Chechen rebels, the usual practice in the long-running propaganda war, caused confusion rather than relief in the media.
"It looks like before the Chechen presidential election the authorities simply do not want to admit an obvious fact: Only Chechen fighters are capable of carrying out terrorist attacks of such scale," the Kommersant daily newspaper said.
It suggested the terrorism theory will resurface next week after the Chechen polls are over.
"Next week things will clear up," it quoted an unnamed FSB member of the investigation team as saying. "Until then, let the disasters be blamed, say, on technical fault or poor quality fuel. This is dictated by the situation."
Bad fuel
Get used to it Russians, it's 587 all over. (and TWA800)
At least their press gets it.
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