MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian airliner crashed south of Moscow, and controllers lost contact with a second passenger jet at about the same time after both took off from Moscow, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported Wednesday. There was no word on survivors.
Witnesses reported seeing an explosion before the 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.
President Vladimir Putin has 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 that apparently had 42 people aboard crashed in the Tula region, 125 miles south of Moscow, at about 10:56 p.m. Tuesday, ITAR-Tass reported, citing the Emergency Situations Ministry.
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 at about the same time near Rostov-on-Don, about 600 miles south of Moscow, ITAR-Tass quoted Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Marina Ryklina as saying. 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 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, where both planes originated, 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 President Vladimir Putin is 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.
The crash comes only days before Sunday’s presidential election in the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Pro-Russian President Akhmad Kadyrov was killed by a bombing in May.
Time to buckle up.