Hmmm. If this is terrorists then why aren't we hearing more of this situation on the news? Oh, thats right there is no oil in Russia....
89 innocent people died in Russia. Bush wants to fight terriorism so I wonder if he is going to send some troops to Russia to assist in finding the terriorist. Police the planet.
I don't think you negotiate with terriorist, I think you find them and bring them to justice.
If this was a terrorist attack in Russia I wonder if there attitude is going to change towards our occupation of Iraq. Maybe they will send some assistance so we can bring some of our troops home.
Needless to say this was just another trajedy that didn't have to happen and my sympathy goes to all the victims families.
89 innocent people died in Russia. Bush wants to fight terriorism so I wonder if he is going to send some troops to Russia to assist in finding the terriorist. Police the planet.
I don't think you negotiate with terriorist, I think you find them and bring them to justice.
If this was a terrorist attack in Russia I wonder if there attitude is going to change towards our occupation of Iraq. Maybe they will send some assistance so we can bring some of our troops home.
Needless to say this was just another trajedy that didn't have to happen and my sympathy goes to all the victims families.
I can't believe this isn't getting more press...As soon as I saw the news I figured terroism and this would be covered non stop....Why not, because its Russia? I think its a very serious situation no matter where the airplanes were hijacked...Who knows where hijacked planes can end up....What a shame, agaain!
Flight Data Recorders Found of 2 Crashed Planes in Russia
By C. J. Chivers and Eein Arvedlund
The New York Times
MOSCOW, Aug. 25 — Investigators picked through the scattered wreckage today of two Russian passenger jets that crashed nearly simultaneously Tuesday night after leaving Moscow, and reported that they had found flight data recorders for both flights, officials said.
At least 89 people died in the crashes, according to the latest tally provided by Domodedovo International Airport, from where both planes had taken off late Tuesday.
Russian officials emphasized that the causes for the crashes had not been found, and urged patience and calm, leaving open the possibility that the crashes had been an awful coincidence — a case of two jetliners leaving the same airfield and suffering catastrophic mishaps only minutes apart.
"The experts are working," Dmitri Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, said in a telephone interview. "They are in the field. But it is a little bit early to be clear of the cause if this great tragedy."
But as airport security was increased throughout Russia, there were indications that at least one of the planes had been hijacked, raising the possibility that terrorists might have infiltrated Russia's most modern airport and conducted a coordinated act.
Ilya Novokhatsky, an executive for the Moscow office of Sibir Airlines, which owned and operated a Tupolev-154 passenger jet that crashed en route to the Black Sea port of Sochi, said in a telephone interview that just before the plane disappeared from the radar the crew had activated an emergency signal indicating the plane had been hijacked.
Mr. Peskov said he was aware of the hijacking report, and that it was being investigated. "It is part of the job of the experts," he said, but neither dismissed nor endorsed the account. "There is no necessity now for speculation," he said.
President Putin, who has been vacationing and working in Sochi, and had ordered the F.S.B., one of the successor agencies to the K.G.B., to investigate the crashes, cut short his vacation and was returning to Moscow in the afternoon.
He was expected to meet Russia's transportation minister later in the day, and to make a statement after the meeting. The transportation minister is leading a state commission looking into the crashes.
Large pieces of wreckage of the other plane, Volga AviaExpress Flight 1303, a Tupolev-134 en route to the Russian city of Volgograd, were visible today in a wheat and barley field near the village of Buchalki, about 100 miles south of Moscow. The plane disappeared from the radar about 10:56 p.m. Tuesday.
Tatyana Tuchina, a farmer, said she and her husband had heard a roar at the time of the crash. "We thought it was thunder," she said, while the authorities with a crane and refrigerated trucks sifted the jet's remains. A police officer said human remains were being removed from a section of fuselage.
The Domodedovo airport press service said the plane had carried 35 passengers and a crew of 8, although an official at the scene said the plane had a crew of 9. Interfax reported that the plane was flown by the airline's general director, whom the company described as an experienced pilot.
Ms. Tuchina also said she had talked with a villager who had been out for a walk on Tuesday night and witnessed the crash. The man told her that he heard two explosions and then watched as the wreckage of the jet fell soundlessly to the ground, she said.
Other witnesses also told authorities that the plane exploded before it crashed, according to Russian news reports. The chief of the region's Ministry of Emergency Situations, Gennady Skachkov, told the RTR television news channel that there had been no distress signals or indications of trouble from the crew before the airplane went down.
The second aircraft, Sibir Airlines Flight 1047, disappeared in the Rostov-on-Don region, about 500 miles south of Moscow near Russia's border with Ukraine, minutes after the first jet crashed. The flight carried 38 passengers and 8 crew members, according to the airport press service.
Continued here.
Phaedrus
By C. J. Chivers and Eein Arvedlund
The New York Times
MOSCOW, Aug. 25 — Investigators picked through the scattered wreckage today of two Russian passenger jets that crashed nearly simultaneously Tuesday night after leaving Moscow, and reported that they had found flight data recorders for both flights, officials said.
At least 89 people died in the crashes, according to the latest tally provided by Domodedovo International Airport, from where both planes had taken off late Tuesday.
Russian officials emphasized that the causes for the crashes had not been found, and urged patience and calm, leaving open the possibility that the crashes had been an awful coincidence — a case of two jetliners leaving the same airfield and suffering catastrophic mishaps only minutes apart.
"The experts are working," Dmitri Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, said in a telephone interview. "They are in the field. But it is a little bit early to be clear of the cause if this great tragedy."
But as airport security was increased throughout Russia, there were indications that at least one of the planes had been hijacked, raising the possibility that terrorists might have infiltrated Russia's most modern airport and conducted a coordinated act.
Ilya Novokhatsky, an executive for the Moscow office of Sibir Airlines, which owned and operated a Tupolev-154 passenger jet that crashed en route to the Black Sea port of Sochi, said in a telephone interview that just before the plane disappeared from the radar the crew had activated an emergency signal indicating the plane had been hijacked.
Mr. Peskov said he was aware of the hijacking report, and that it was being investigated. "It is part of the job of the experts," he said, but neither dismissed nor endorsed the account. "There is no necessity now for speculation," he said.
President Putin, who has been vacationing and working in Sochi, and had ordered the F.S.B., one of the successor agencies to the K.G.B., to investigate the crashes, cut short his vacation and was returning to Moscow in the afternoon.
He was expected to meet Russia's transportation minister later in the day, and to make a statement after the meeting. The transportation minister is leading a state commission looking into the crashes.
Large pieces of wreckage of the other plane, Volga AviaExpress Flight 1303, a Tupolev-134 en route to the Russian city of Volgograd, were visible today in a wheat and barley field near the village of Buchalki, about 100 miles south of Moscow. The plane disappeared from the radar about 10:56 p.m. Tuesday.
Tatyana Tuchina, a farmer, said she and her husband had heard a roar at the time of the crash. "We thought it was thunder," she said, while the authorities with a crane and refrigerated trucks sifted the jet's remains. A police officer said human remains were being removed from a section of fuselage.
The Domodedovo airport press service said the plane had carried 35 passengers and a crew of 8, although an official at the scene said the plane had a crew of 9. Interfax reported that the plane was flown by the airline's general director, whom the company described as an experienced pilot.
Ms. Tuchina also said she had talked with a villager who had been out for a walk on Tuesday night and witnessed the crash. The man told her that he heard two explosions and then watched as the wreckage of the jet fell soundlessly to the ground, she said.
Other witnesses also told authorities that the plane exploded before it crashed, according to Russian news reports. The chief of the region's Ministry of Emergency Situations, Gennady Skachkov, told the RTR television news channel that there had been no distress signals or indications of trouble from the crew before the airplane went down.
The second aircraft, Sibir Airlines Flight 1047, disappeared in the Rostov-on-Don region, about 500 miles south of Moscow near Russia's border with Ukraine, minutes after the first jet crashed. The flight carried 38 passengers and 8 crew members, according to the airport press service.
Continued here.
Phaedrus
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by D2bets:
It's definitely terrorism/murder. But probably not Al Qaeda directly. Probably the work of chechen rebels (whom the US has given support to, sad to say). Though I wouldn't be surprised if there were some "ties" (business) between the chechens and Al Qaeda. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
IThere are pretty close ties between Al Queda and Chechnya...not sure how close they are now though.
Aug. 15, 1999 — Senior U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials tell NBC News that there has been recent intelligence reporting that Osama bin Laden is financing the Chechen operation in Dagestan and may be ready to leave Afghanistan for the former Russian republic of Chechnya.
THE OFFICIALS, who asked for anonymity, say that foreign contributions to Islamic militants in Chechnya is one of two main sources of funds for operation, the other being ransoms from kidnapping and the capture of oil shipments. The US believes that one of the main foreign sources of money is bin Laden.
The key bin Laden connection is a rebel leader whose nom de guerre is “Hattab.” The one-eyed Hattab is a Jordanian who fought in Afghanistan and then moved on to Chechnya and “earned the right to remain there” because of his fighting there during the recent civil war with Russia, said one official.
Hattab was one of the first to help both the Afghani rebels and the Chechens. Of the first 3,000 Chechen rebels, 600 were Arabs like Hattab who had fought against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Now, however, say officials, Hattab and his crowd have become a serious threat to the government of Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov, who was elected in an open election monitored by the OSCE. The government of Chechnya is weak and can not control the fundamentalists who demand that Islamic justice be applied in Chechnya.
The fundamentalists are strongest in the eastern part of Chechnya next to the Dagestan border. Hattab operates a training camp in Chechnya in the town of Vedeno.
Robert Windrem is an investigative producer for the Nightly News with Tom Brokaw
It's definitely terrorism/murder. But probably not Al Qaeda directly. Probably the work of chechen rebels (whom the US has given support to, sad to say). Though I wouldn't be surprised if there were some "ties" (business) between the chechens and Al Qaeda. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
IThere are pretty close ties between Al Queda and Chechnya...not sure how close they are now though.
Aug. 15, 1999 — Senior U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials tell NBC News that there has been recent intelligence reporting that Osama bin Laden is financing the Chechen operation in Dagestan and may be ready to leave Afghanistan for the former Russian republic of Chechnya.
THE OFFICIALS, who asked for anonymity, say that foreign contributions to Islamic militants in Chechnya is one of two main sources of funds for operation, the other being ransoms from kidnapping and the capture of oil shipments. The US believes that one of the main foreign sources of money is bin Laden.
The key bin Laden connection is a rebel leader whose nom de guerre is “Hattab.” The one-eyed Hattab is a Jordanian who fought in Afghanistan and then moved on to Chechnya and “earned the right to remain there” because of his fighting there during the recent civil war with Russia, said one official.
Hattab was one of the first to help both the Afghani rebels and the Chechens. Of the first 3,000 Chechen rebels, 600 were Arabs like Hattab who had fought against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Now, however, say officials, Hattab and his crowd have become a serious threat to the government of Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov, who was elected in an open election monitored by the OSCE. The government of Chechnya is weak and can not control the fundamentalists who demand that Islamic justice be applied in Chechnya.
The fundamentalists are strongest in the eastern part of Chechnya next to the Dagestan border. Hattab operates a training camp in Chechnya in the town of Vedeno.
Robert Windrem is an investigative producer for the Nightly News with Tom Brokaw
Evidence of Terrorism Mounts in Russian Probe
Explosives found in one jet; officials investigate 2 women onboard
Russia's Emergencies Ministry personnel are seen searching a downed Tupolev Tu-134 plane near Tula, on Wednesday.
(Associated Press/MSNBC)
MOSCOW - One of two Russian airliners that crashed nearly simultaneously was brought down by a terrorist act, officials said Friday, after finding traces of explosives in the plane’s wreckage. An Islamic militant group claimed responsibility for the attack in a Web statement.
The planes, with 90 people aboard, went down within 20 minutes of each other Tuesday night. In Washington, a Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there is mounting evidence that both crashes were acts of terrorism.
Traces of the explosive hexogen were found in the remains of one of the planes, a Tu-154, security service spokesman Nikolai Zakharov said. No results from the investigation of the other crashed plane, a Tu-134, have been announced.
“According to preliminary information, at least one of the air crashes ... has been the result of a terrorist act,” a spokesman for the Federal Security Service, Sergei Ignatchenko, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
The Tu-154 was carrying 46 people when it crashed en route to the Black Sea resort of Sochi. The other flight had 44 people aboard, heading to the southern city of Volgograd, when it went down.
NATO’s chief blamed terrorism for both crashes.
“I condemn in the strongest possible terms the apparent act of barbaric terrorism ... resulting in the crash of two Russian passenger aircraft, and the senseless loss of innocent lives,” NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said Friday.
Hexogen, the explosive found in the Tu-154, is the material that Russian officials said was used in the 1999 apartment bombings that killed some 300 people in Russia, an attack blamed on Chechen separatists.
Despite the suspicious timing of the crashes and the fact they took place five days before an election in Chechnya opposed by separatists, Russian officials had kept open the possibility they were caused by bad fuel or human error.
Islamic militant group claims responsibility
A Web site connected to Islamic militants published a statement on Friday — signed the “Islambouli Brigades” — claiming responsibility for the crashes. The statement’s authenticity could not immediately be confirmed.
The statement said five “mujahedeen” — holy fighters — were aboard each plane. It said the two planes were downed as part of a series of operations “to extend support and victory to our Muslim brothers in Chechnya and other Muslim areas which suffer from Russian faithlessness.”
The Federal Security Service declined to comment on the statement.
Russian officials have contended that the rebels fighting Russian forces in Chechnya for nearly five years receive help from foreign terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida.
Friday’s claim did not refer to al-Qaida, but a group called “the Islambouli Brigades of al-Qaida” claimed responsibility for last month’s attempt to assassinate Pakistan’s prime minister-designate.
Lt. Khaled Islambouli was the leader of the group of soldiers who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Cairo in 1981.
Two female passengers under investigation
Russian officials, meanwhile, said they were investigating two female passengers — one on each plane — with Chechen names. The two were the only passengers whose relatives did not contact authorities, officials said.
Female suicide bombers with alleged Chechen connections have carried out attacks in Moscow, including the twin bombing of an outdoor rock concert and another blast outside a hotel adjacent to Red Square.
Paul Duffy, a Moscow-based aviation expert, told Associated Press Television that he found it “hard to believe” that five attackers were aboard each plane, “but there is no doubt that they had at least one on each aircraft.”
Both planes took off from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, one of Russia’s most modern and sophisticated. It was not immediately clear how airport security systems could be circumvented to smuggle in explosives.
Although Friday’s developments raised security concerns for the airlines that crisscross the sprawling country, Russia did not order a halt to air traffic, as the United States did after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Warning of attacks ahead of Chechen vote
Chechens on Sunday are to vote for the republic’s president, to replace Kremlin-backed Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in a May 9 bomb attack.
Officials had warned that Chechen separatists might try to carry out attacks ahead of the vote, which is part of the Kremlin’s attempts to establish a modicum of civil order in the region and undermine separatist rebels.
A Chechen connection to the crashes would be likely to further harden the Kremlin’s already-stony refusal to negotiate an end to the war, as well as to expose weakness in its strategy.
“Here’s the answer to how effective our politics in Chechnya have been,” Russian legislator Vladimir Ryzhkov was quoted as saying in the newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
Security analyst Andrei Soldatov said a connection could bring more suffering to Chechnya, where Russian forces are widely criticized for abusing and abducting civilians.
“The government will now be able to say that the fight against separatists in Chechnya comes under the roof of international terrorism. As soon as they say that, you can forget about human rights in the region,” he said.
Distress signal reported
Details of how the planes were destroyed remained incomplete. News reports said at least one of the planes sent a distress signal indicating a hijacking shortly before it disappeared from radar screens.
That led to speculation that Russian anti-aircraft missiles may have shot down the planes to prevent a Sept. 11-type plan to crash them into buildings. The Tu-154 was en route to Sochi, where Russian President Vladimir Putin was at his summer residence.
However, independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer dismissed that speculation, saying the plane wreckage did not show signs of being shot down and that there are no anti-aircraft missile batteries in the regions where the planes fell.
Victims’ families began holding funerals Friday, including for Tengiz Yakobashvili, a dual Russian-Israeli citizen. “He helped many people and he did it quietly,” Rabbi Shmuel Kuperman said at his funeral in Moscow.
Explosives found in one jet; officials investigate 2 women onboard
Russia's Emergencies Ministry personnel are seen searching a downed Tupolev Tu-134 plane near Tula, on Wednesday.
(Associated Press/MSNBC)
MOSCOW - One of two Russian airliners that crashed nearly simultaneously was brought down by a terrorist act, officials said Friday, after finding traces of explosives in the plane’s wreckage. An Islamic militant group claimed responsibility for the attack in a Web statement.
The planes, with 90 people aboard, went down within 20 minutes of each other Tuesday night. In Washington, a Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there is mounting evidence that both crashes were acts of terrorism.
Traces of the explosive hexogen were found in the remains of one of the planes, a Tu-154, security service spokesman Nikolai Zakharov said. No results from the investigation of the other crashed plane, a Tu-134, have been announced.
“According to preliminary information, at least one of the air crashes ... has been the result of a terrorist act,” a spokesman for the Federal Security Service, Sergei Ignatchenko, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
The Tu-154 was carrying 46 people when it crashed en route to the Black Sea resort of Sochi. The other flight had 44 people aboard, heading to the southern city of Volgograd, when it went down.
NATO’s chief blamed terrorism for both crashes.
“I condemn in the strongest possible terms the apparent act of barbaric terrorism ... resulting in the crash of two Russian passenger aircraft, and the senseless loss of innocent lives,” NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said Friday.
Hexogen, the explosive found in the Tu-154, is the material that Russian officials said was used in the 1999 apartment bombings that killed some 300 people in Russia, an attack blamed on Chechen separatists.
Despite the suspicious timing of the crashes and the fact they took place five days before an election in Chechnya opposed by separatists, Russian officials had kept open the possibility they were caused by bad fuel or human error.
Islamic militant group claims responsibility
A Web site connected to Islamic militants published a statement on Friday — signed the “Islambouli Brigades” — claiming responsibility for the crashes. The statement’s authenticity could not immediately be confirmed.
The statement said five “mujahedeen” — holy fighters — were aboard each plane. It said the two planes were downed as part of a series of operations “to extend support and victory to our Muslim brothers in Chechnya and other Muslim areas which suffer from Russian faithlessness.”
The Federal Security Service declined to comment on the statement.
Russian officials have contended that the rebels fighting Russian forces in Chechnya for nearly five years receive help from foreign terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida.
Friday’s claim did not refer to al-Qaida, but a group called “the Islambouli Brigades of al-Qaida” claimed responsibility for last month’s attempt to assassinate Pakistan’s prime minister-designate.
Lt. Khaled Islambouli was the leader of the group of soldiers who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Cairo in 1981.
Two female passengers under investigation
Russian officials, meanwhile, said they were investigating two female passengers — one on each plane — with Chechen names. The two were the only passengers whose relatives did not contact authorities, officials said.
Female suicide bombers with alleged Chechen connections have carried out attacks in Moscow, including the twin bombing of an outdoor rock concert and another blast outside a hotel adjacent to Red Square.
Paul Duffy, a Moscow-based aviation expert, told Associated Press Television that he found it “hard to believe” that five attackers were aboard each plane, “but there is no doubt that they had at least one on each aircraft.”
Both planes took off from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, one of Russia’s most modern and sophisticated. It was not immediately clear how airport security systems could be circumvented to smuggle in explosives.
Although Friday’s developments raised security concerns for the airlines that crisscross the sprawling country, Russia did not order a halt to air traffic, as the United States did after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Warning of attacks ahead of Chechen vote
Chechens on Sunday are to vote for the republic’s president, to replace Kremlin-backed Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in a May 9 bomb attack.
Officials had warned that Chechen separatists might try to carry out attacks ahead of the vote, which is part of the Kremlin’s attempts to establish a modicum of civil order in the region and undermine separatist rebels.
A Chechen connection to the crashes would be likely to further harden the Kremlin’s already-stony refusal to negotiate an end to the war, as well as to expose weakness in its strategy.
“Here’s the answer to how effective our politics in Chechnya have been,” Russian legislator Vladimir Ryzhkov was quoted as saying in the newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
Security analyst Andrei Soldatov said a connection could bring more suffering to Chechnya, where Russian forces are widely criticized for abusing and abducting civilians.
“The government will now be able to say that the fight against separatists in Chechnya comes under the roof of international terrorism. As soon as they say that, you can forget about human rights in the region,” he said.
Distress signal reported
Details of how the planes were destroyed remained incomplete. News reports said at least one of the planes sent a distress signal indicating a hijacking shortly before it disappeared from radar screens.
That led to speculation that Russian anti-aircraft missiles may have shot down the planes to prevent a Sept. 11-type plan to crash them into buildings. The Tu-154 was en route to Sochi, where Russian President Vladimir Putin was at his summer residence.
However, independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer dismissed that speculation, saying the plane wreckage did not show signs of being shot down and that there are no anti-aircraft missile batteries in the regions where the planes fell.
Victims’ families began holding funerals Friday, including for Tengiz Yakobashvili, a dual Russian-Israeli citizen. “He helped many people and he did it quietly,” Rabbi Shmuel Kuperman said at his funeral in Moscow.
According to Thunder >>There is no oil in Russia.
This was possibly the dumbest most ill informed statement ever posted on theis website.
Heres some proof.
http://power.about.com/library/weekly/aa111601a.html
This was possibly the dumbest most ill informed statement ever posted on theis website.
Heres some proof.
http://power.about.com/library/weekly/aa111601a.html
Shotgun, I overlooked that comment. That may be worth some sort of pewter or 100% Post-Consumer Recycled Toilet Paper medal.
Thunder, just so you'll know for future reference, Russia is the world's 5th most prolific producer of oil and it's 2nd biggest exporter after Saudi Arabia (see here.)
Phaedrus
Thunder, just so you'll know for future reference, Russia is the world's 5th most prolific producer of oil and it's 2nd biggest exporter after Saudi Arabia (see here.)
Phaedrus
