Russian Airliner From Israel Crashes Russian Airliner From Israel Crashes (AP) MOSCOW (AP) - A chartered Russian airliner flying from Tel Aviv to Siberia exploded in flight Thursday and crashed off the Black Sea coast with at least 77 people on board. Russian officials said they could not rule out a terrorist attack.

Deputy Transport Minister Karl Ruppel told The Associated Press that a crew of an Armenian airliner in the area had informed Russian air traffic controllers that they saw an explosion aboard a plane flying nearby. Ruppel said he didn't know what caused the explosion. He was confirming Russian media reports that there had been a blast on the Russian plane.

Garik Ovanisian, the pilot of the Armenian An-24, told AP his plane was at 20,790 feet above the Black Sea when the plane above his exploded. The Armenian plane was on a regularly scheduled flight over the Black Sea from the Ukrainian Crimean city of Simferopol to the Armenian capital, Yerevan.

``I saw the explosion on the plane, which was above me at an altitude of 36,300 feet,'' Ovanisian said. ``The plane fell into the sea, and there was another explosion in the sea. After that I saw a big white spot on the sea, and I had the impression that oil was burning.''

Ivan Teterian, chief of the local Ministry of Emergency Situations branch in southern Russia, said ``we cannot exclude a terrorist attack.'' Speaking live on Russia's NTV television, he added that only a further investigation could confirm it.

Bush administration officials were in almost immediate contact with their counterparts in Moscow in an attempt to determine whether there was a connection between the explosion and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or U.S. plans to retaliate.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites), who has taken a high-profile position in the international anti-terrorist coalition that has formed following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (news - web sites), was immediately informed of the crash.

``We must launch rescue work, gather all we can and conduct expertise. If the sea depth allows that, we must try to recover the black box,'' Putin said. He named Vladimir Rushailo, head of the presidential Security Council, to head the investigation.

Nikolai Patrushev, the head of Russia's Federal Security Service, said that planes and ships had been sent to the area of the crash within 15 minutes.

Israeli Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh said there was no clear evidence that the plane crashed as a result of a terror attack.

But Israel suspended takeoffs of foreign flights from its main international airport, Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv, Sneh said.

The Tupolev 154 went down 114 miles off the Russian coastal city of Adler, located on the Georgian border, said Vasily Yurchuk, a spokesman for the Ministry of Emergency Situations.

The plane was on its way from Tel Aviv to the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, Yurchuk said. It belonged to Sibir Airlines, which is based in Novosibirsk, about 1,750 miles east of Moscow. Sibir Airlines confirmed it was a charter flight.

The Emergency Situations Ministry said there were at least 66 passengers and 11 crew members aboard.

After the crash, Israel suspended takeoffs of foreign flights from its main airport.

Sneh told AP that some Israeli citizens were on board the flight. Officials at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv would not release a passenger list.

Vladimir Kofman, an official with the Interstate Aviation Committee, initially said the plane had made a stopover in Burgas, Bulgaria, where it apparently took on more passengers. The agency is in charge of investigating crashes in the former Soviet republics.

However, the head of the Flight Coordination office in the Bulgarian Black Sea port of Varna, which oversees air traffic in eastern Bulgaria, said the plane did not land in Bulgaria or enter Bulgarian airspace. The official said the plane had flown through Turkish airspace.

Zhivko Zhelyazkov, director-general of the Bulgarian government's Air Surveillance Authority, told The Associated Press that the plane flew from Tel Aviv over Turkey without entering Bulgarian airspace. The plane did not land in Bulgaria, he said, confirming earlier accounts by local aviation officials.

-- Guy Daley (guydaley1@netzero.net), October 04, 2001

Answers

Thursday October 4 10:26 AM ET

Russian Plane Crash Raises New Terror Fears

By Alan Elsner and Richard Balmforth

WASHINGTON/MOSCOW (Reuters) -

A Russian plane from Tel Aviv carrying up to 78 people, most of them Israelis, exploded and crashed into the Black Sea off Russia on Thursday, rattling Western nerves as the United States lined up allies for a war against terrorism.

Israeli authorities suspended all flights from Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport, where security is the tightest in the world, but allowed incoming planes to land.

``A civilian aircraft crashed today and it is possible that it was the result of a terrorist act,'' Russian President Vladimir Putin told a meeting of European justice ministers.

An Armenian pilot flying alongside the downed TU-154 Sibir airlines jet, which had been heading from Tel-Aviv's Ben Gurion airport to the Siberian town of Novosibirsk, witnessed the crash. He described seeing flames, an explosion and then fragments of aircraft plunging toward the water.

Nikolai Patrushev, the head of Russia's domestic FSB security services, said he had heard from Armenian officials of the report of the mid-air blast.

``They saw the plane blow up in the air,'' Patrushev told a solemn- looking Putin during a crisis meeting in the Kremlin, also attended by Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov.

But because the plane fell into the sea, recovery and investigations was expected to be difficult, meaning there might not be any conclusive word for some time on whether the crash was caused by an accident or a bomb.

The crash occurred 24 days after hijackers took over four U.S. airliners, crashing two into New York's World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon outside Washington. The fourth crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers struggled with the hijackers. More than 5,700 people are dead or still missing and presumed dead.

The United States has been showing its allies evidence that Saudi- born militant Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network were behind the Sept. 11 attack and on Thursday won a key endorsement from Pakistan.

``We have seen the material that was provided to us by the American side yesterday. This material certainly provides sufficient basis for indictment in a court of law,'' said Foreign Ministry spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan.

He said Pakistan no longer had any diplomatic or other presence in Afghanistan, and had no plans to show the evidence to Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, who are sheltering bin Laden and have refused to give him up.

BIN LADEN COULD STRIKE AGAIN

The British government released a 21-page document, concluding that bin Laden and al Qaeda retained the will and the resources to carry out further attacks.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said the time for military action was nearing and French President Jacques Chirac said a military response by Washington was now a certainty.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld held talks with Sultan Qaboos of Oman on how his country, within striking distance of Afghanistan, could help U.S. forces conduct an offensive.

Rumsfeld has been stiffening the resolve of Gulf states, which are concerned that the U.S. action is limited to Afghanistan and does not expand to involve Arab states like Iraq, identified by Washington as a backer of terrorism.

President Bush has vowed to go after all terrorist groups with global reach and the countries that harbor and support them.

But bin Laden has strong public support throughout the Arab and Muslim world, including Pakistan. The United States does not want to destabilize any of its allies through its actions.

A further sign that Pakistan's backing for Washington's ''war on terror'' was politically hazardous came in a blunt warning to Islamabad by a former Afghan guerrilla chief.

``If Pakistan is found participating in a campaign orchestrated by our enemies to destabilize Afghanistan and cause death and destruction to break the nerve of this brave nation, then it would have to pay a very heavy price,'' Gulbuddin Hekmatyar said in an open letter to Pakistanis distributed by a spokesman.

The military chief of the Northern Alliance that has been fighting the Taliban vowed an all-out offensive to coincide with any U.S.-led strikes, but said there was no formal military cooperation between his forces and the United States.

In London, Blair told parliament there was firm evidence linking bin Laden to at least three of the hijackers who flew planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

``I can now confirm that of the 19 hijackers identified from the passenger lists of the four planes hijacked in America on the 11th of September, at least three of these hijackers have already been positively identified as known associates of bin Laden with a track record in his camps and organizations,'' Blair said.

The United States asked its NATO allies on Wednesday for carte blanche to fly through their airspace as well as for use of air bases in Europe and NATO fuel pipelines.

NATO sources said it was the first time the United States had asked to use the alliance's Cold War-era network of aviation fuel pipelines since the 1991 Gulf War.

Iran said on Thursday it has sent thousands of extra troops to its eastern border with Afghanistan to stop refugees flooding across the frontier in case of U.S. strikes.

It said troops were digging trenches, setting up barbed and electronic detection devices to halt up to 400,000 refugees.

ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN SEEN

U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said the U.S. economy had almost certainly contracted as a result of the attack but predicted it would quickly bounce back.

``There's almost no way that an economy like ours can escape negative growth when you have that kind of a shutdown in the economy,'' he said. Wall Street opened mixed after an impressive run up in recent days that has brought key indices to within a few points of where they were on Sept. 10.

Experts said the time window for U.S.-led military action appeared to be narrowing, with several indicators pointing to a possible strike any time from early next week.

Washington is playing down the prospect of an imminent strike. U.S. officials are still requesting help from partners as diverse as Saudi Arabia, Russia, NATO and Uzbekistan.

But a host of factors including politicians' travel plans, the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, public opinion, the weather and Muslim holidays all point to a short window of opportunity for action between October 8 and mid-November.

Rumsfeld said he had an inkling of bin Laden's whereabouts, but not an exact location. He also said conventional weapons would not be the determining factor in the war on terrorism.

With pressure piling on the Taliban, the United Nations food agency said on Wednesday desperately needed aid was entering Afghanistan, but more wheat must reach the country to prevent war and winter from creating a new humanitarian catastrophe.

-- PHO (owennos@bigfoot.com), October 04, 2001.

The Russians shot down (accidently) their own plane.

JB

-- Jackson Brown (Jackson_Brown@deja.com), October 04, 2001.

Here's the article (no URL, AOL news feed)

Missile May Have Hit Plane

By DEBORAH SEWARD .c The Associated Press

MOSCOW (AP) - A Russian chartered airliner heading from Israel to Siberia exploded Thursday and crashed off the Black Sea coast with at least 76 people on board. U.S. officials said a missile fired during a military training exercise in Ukraine appears to have accidentally brought down the plane.

Earlier, President Vladimir Putin said terrorism could be the cause.

However, a U.S. Defense Department official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a land-based surface-to-air missile had been fired from the Crimean region of Ukraine. Ukraine is the only country known to be conducting military exercises in the Black Sea area, the official said.

The downing of the airliner appeared to be accidental, U.S. officials said.

Col. Vyacheslav Sedov of the Russian Defense Ministry said the ministry had heard reports about a stray missile hitting the plane but wouldn't make any immediate comment.

The exercises were conducted on Cape Onuk, in Crimea, about 160 miles from the site of the crash, on territory controlled by the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Ukrainian anti-aircraft, navy, rocket forces, aviation and artillery took part as well as Russian forces including shore-based forces and a guard ship.

Part of the exercise involved firing on an unmanned aircraft.

According to military officials, the exercise included anti-aircraft S-125, S-200 and S-300 rockets, which are similar to American ``Patriot'' missiles, and R-300 tactical rockets.

If confirmed, this would not be the first time a commercial flight has been accidentally shot down. On July 3, 1988, the cruiser USS Vincennes mistakenly shot down an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf, killing all 270 aboard.

The explosion Thursday caused the Tupolev 154 to break into pieces and tumble to the sea 114 miles off the Russian coastal city of Adler on the Georgian border, said Vasily Yurchuk, a spokesman for the Ministry of Emergency Situations.

The plane was on its way from Tel Aviv to the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, Yurchuk said. It belonged to Sibir Airlines, which is based in Novosibirsk, about 1,750 miles east of Moscow, and had been chartered, Sibir officials said.

A spokesman for the airline, Yevgeny Filenin, said that there were 64 passengers and 12 crew members aboard. All the passengers were Israelis, said Sergei Moslayov, a duty officer at the Emergency Situations Ministry.

The deputy director for security for Sibir airlines, Viktor Alexeyev, was aboard the plane, state-controlled ORT television reported, citing the airline's deputy director, Natalia Filyova.

Nikolai Patrushev, the head of Russia's Federal Security Service, told Putin in a televised meeting that Russian officials had first learned of the crash from Armenian officials. He said planes and ships had been sent to the area of the crash. The Black Sea is a half- mile deep at the site of the crash, authorities said.

``We must launch rescue work, gather all we can and conduct expertise. If the sea depth allows that, we must try to recover the black box,'' Putin said.

The Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman, Tatyana Andreyeva, said that one body had been recovered so far, as well as some fragments of the plane.

Garik Ovanisian, the pilot of the Armenian An-24, said his plane was at 20,790 feet above the Black Sea when the plane above his exploded.

``I saw the explosion on the plane, which was above me at an altitude of 36,300 feet,'' Ovanisian told AP. ``The plane fell into the sea, and there was another explosion in the sea. After that I saw a big white spot on the sea and I had the impression that oil was burning.''

The Armenian plane was on a regularly scheduled flight over the Black Sea from the Ukrainian Crimean city of Simferopol to the Armenian capital Yerevan.

In Romania, the Coastal Radio Service said it picked up signals for help from the Black Sea. Duty officer Traian Niculescu, stationed in the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta, told Romania's Pro-TV that he had received ``a distress call ... simply saying 'Mayday, Mayday,' without any identification.'' Then he heard conversation in Russian.

Bush administration officials quickly contacted their counterparts in Moscow in an attempt to determine whether there was a connection between the explosion and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or U.S. plans to retaliate.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the ``appropriate people'' in the Bush administration have called Russian officials to ``ascertain the facts.''

Putin, who has taken a high-profile position in the international anti-terrorist coalition that has formed following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, told a meeting of visiting European justice ministers that ``a civilian aircraft crashed today and it is possible that it is the result of a terrorist act.''

The crash was the 21st involving a Tu-154 since it entered service in the early 1970s. With some 1,000 planes built, it is the most widely used jetliner in Russia and is used in many other countries.

Vladimir Kofman, an official with the Interstate Aviation Committee, said the plane had made a stopover in Burgas, Bulgaria. However, Bulgarian officials vigorously denied that the plane had even entered Bulgaria's airspace.

After the crash, Israel suspended takeoffs of foreign flights from its main airport, Ben Gurion International near Tel Aviv.

-- Jackson Brown (Jackson_Brown@deja.com), October 04, 2001.

Ukraine Denies Downing Russian Plane

The Associated Press

Thursday, Oct. 4, 2001; 12:23 p.m. EDT

KIEV, Ukraine –– The Ukrainian Defense Ministry denied Thursday any of its forces fired a rocket which could have hit the Russian aircraft that exploded and crashed into the Black Sea.

A senior U.S. military official in Washington said the plane may have been downed by a surface-to-air missile fired during a military exercise in Ukraine. Russian officials were investigating the possibility of a terrorist attack.

All the rockets used in the training exercise have "self-destruction mechanisms in case they deviated from their course," said Defense Minister Oleksandr Kuzmuk, according to a statement released by ministry spokesman Kostyantyn Khivrenko.

The Tu-154 aircraft was en route from Tel Aviv, Israel, to the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. It was carrying 76 people, according to Sibir Airlines, from which it was chartered.

© Copyright 2001 The Associated Press

-- PHO (owennos@bigfoot.com), October 04, 2001.