- MOSCOW (AFP) -- Russia said
terrorists were behind a passenger jet crash as an Islamic group proclaiming
support for rebels in Chechnya claimed responsibility for the downing of
that and another plane.
-
- "According to our initial investigation, at least
one of the air crashes ... came as a result of a terror attack," a
spokesman for Russia's FSB intelligence service was quoted as saying by
Russian news agencies.
-
- The spokesman, Sergei Ignachenko, announced that investigators
had discovered traces of Hexogen, a powerful explosive with both military
and civilian uses, in the wreckage of one of two planes that crashed almost
simultaneously on Tuesday.
-
- Hexogen was identified by Russian authorities in 1999
as the explosive used in a series of apartment building blasts that killed
around 200 people, an attack cited by Russian President Vladimir Putin
as justification for invading Chechnya.
-
- Ignachenko said no similar evidence of terrorism had
yet been found in the wreckage of the other plane.
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- There was also no official assertion of a link between
the terrorists and rebels in the Muslim Russian republic of Chechnya who
have vowed to take their five-year guerrilla war against Russian troops
into the country's main cities.
-
- Officials acknowledged however that they were investigating
possible connections with Chechnya, where elections crucial to the Kremlin
were due Sunday.
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- Russian news agencies said suspicion was focused on a
woman from Chechnya who was aboard one of the planes because no one had
come forward to identify or claim the corpse.
-
- The head of Chechnya's interior ministry, Akhmed Dakayev,
was quoted by Interfax as saying that another woman, a resident of the
Chechen capital Grozny, was aboard the second plane and that he had been
instructed to confirm the identities of both.
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- The plane that officials said was brought down by terrorists
was flying from Moscow to the Black Sea resort of Sochi with 46 passengers
and crew aboard when it crashed near the southern city of Rostov-on-Don.
-
- At almost precisely the same moment, a second plane carrying
43 people to the southern city of Volgograd fell to the ground outside
the city of Tula 180 kilometers (112 miles) south of Moscow.
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- An Islamic group calling itself the Islambouli Brigades
meanwhile claimed responsibility for the downing of both planes, hailing
it as a first strike to stop Moscow's fight against separatists in Chechnya.
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- "The Islambouli Brigades declare that our mujahedeen
(fighters) have succeeded in hijacking two Russian planes," said the
group in a statement posted on a website.
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- "The mujahedeens have succeeded despite the problems
that they encountered at the beginning. There were five mujahedeens in
each plane."
-
- The attacks "will be followed by a series of operations
aimed to back and assist our brothers in Chechnya and other regions suffering
from Russia," the claim warned.
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- The authenticity of the statement could not immediately
be confirmed, and Russian officials had no comment.
-
- A group by the same name claimed attacks in Pakistan
earlier this month. The use of the name Islambouli was a likely reference
to Lieutenant Khaled al-Islambouli who took part in the assassination of
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Cairo in 1981.
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- Russia's ITAR-TASS news agency quoted an anonymous source
as saying that the crew of one of the crashed planes alerted ground controllers
that a hijacking was in progress.
-
- "We heard three urgent calls about the hijacking
of a plane," the source said. "This happened at 10:54 pm on August
24. After that, the plane disappeared from the radar."
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reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority
of Agence France Presse.
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