Two Russian Civilian Airlines Lost on Radar

[bn880 5]

Yeah but they're siding with the Chechens against the Russians. In the end this is all Christians whacking Muslims and vice versa...

[Mister Frag 0]

There's also this from http://www.cnn.com/2004....ex.html

Quote[/b] ]The FSB confirmed that a Chechen woman was on board the Siberia Airlines flight, and no friends or relatives had come forward. Her remains have not been found.

She is the only passenger on the flight that has not been inquired after.

According to Russian media reports quoting security sources and Chechnya's interior minister, a Chechen woman also boarded the first plane that crashed, a Volga-Avia Express Tupolev 134.

The Grozny resident, born in 1977, was the last passenger to board the Tu-134 and had purchased her ticket an hour before the flight departed.

No friends or relatives have inquired about her remains, which have also not been located, according to the media reports. She is also the only passenger on that flight that no one has claimed.

[aj_addons 0]

explosive belt anyone if they havent found any remains

[Winters 1]

Quote[/b] ]The FSB confirmed that a Chechen woman was on board the Siberia Airlines flight, and no friends or relatives had come forward. Her remains have not been found.

She is the only passenger on the flight that has not been inquired after.

According to Russian media reports quoting security sources and Chechnya's interior minister, a Chechen woman also boarded the first plane that crashed, a Volga-Avia Express Tupolev 134.

The Grozny resident, born in 1977, was the last passenger to board the Tu-134 and had purchased her ticket an hour before the flight departed.

No friends or relatives have inquired about her remains, which have also not been located, according to the media reports. She is also the only passenger on that flight that no one has claimed.

Well that seems pretty damming to me, hard to believe that there would be 2 Chechen loners that nobody would come forward to either claim or inquiry about.

This was pretty clear before that it was terrorism, i mean how could 2 planes crash within minutes of each other unless it was a terrorist bombing?

[edc 0]

Would a person wearing explosives be enough to bring down a jet? I would kind of think that it would require atleast a fair amount, enough that the they would probably be seen before they got on the plane, though I know nothing about engineering and not a whole lot about aerodynamics.

[Mister Frag 0]

All you have to do is breach the pressurized cabin, and the whole fuselage will pop like a can of ready-to-bake dinner rolls.

[Pathy 0]

I'd say probably yes.....an explosion in a small compressed, pressurised tube, its going to probably  break up the structural integrety of the aircraft at least.......i guess it could pretty much break the plane in two, once that happens, the aircraft is down.......

EDIT: As frag said, all youd have to do is knock out a small section of the cabin wall and the rest is going to go to shit......

[Tovarish 0]

Just heard on CBC news that the traces of explosive found are reportedly the same kind as that used in the Moscow appartment bombings that precipitated the current Chechen war.

[Mister Frag 0]

This was relayed to me by an old friend of these forums. The story came from http://www.gazeta.ru/2004/08/27/oa_131573.shtml

Quote[/b] ]Investigators find explosives in Russia plane wreck

Explosive of a kind used by Chechen rebels has been found in one of two airliners that crashed simultaneously, Russian investigators said, making it look ever likelier that the disaster was a political attack.

The FSB security service declined to comment on an Internet claim by an Islamist group that its followers had brought the planes down on Tuesday, killing at least 89 people, to avenge the killing of Muslims in Russia's rebel Chechnya province. But it said it had identified "a number of people with possible links to the terrorist act".

Investigators were tracing the background of two passengers with typically Chechen surnames, one from each plane.

Chechnya's Islamist rebels have staged spectacular attacks in the past to press their independence drive, and threatened more attacks in the run-up to the election of a president to head the pro-Moscow regional government this Sunday.

The Tu-154, bound for Sochi on the Black Sea, crashed near the southern city of Rostov-on-Don less than four minutes after a Tu-134 flying to Volgograd crashed near Tula, south of Moscow. Both flew from Moscow's Domodedovo airport.

"During the examination of the wreckage of the Tu-154 plane traces of explosives were found," said a spokeswoman for the FSB, entrusted by President Vladimir Putin with the probe. She said the explosive was of a type used in some previous attacks blamed on Chechen separatists, including apartment block bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk in 1999 that killed more than 200 people.

It was a substance called hexogen, more widely known as RDX – a powder which when mixed with TNT is used as an explosive element in artillery shells and torpedoes. The head of the investigating commission said on Thursday night that the crew had activated a distress signal shortly before crashing, but failed to provide voice confirmation.

Putin, now in his second term, has been plagued by Chechen rebel attacks including a major raid in the regional capital Grozny last weekend. Responsible for sending Russian troops back to the region in 1999, he saw early military successes turn into attritional guerrilla warfare with the separatists.

But rebel attacks appear to have done little to dent his popularity in the rest of Russia. Putin argues that his hardline approach is part of an international war on terror. The Islamist group that made the claim, calling itself the Islambouli Brigade, said five militants had hijacked each plane, according to the website. The Arabic-language statement, whose authenticity could not be verified, threatened more attacks.

"Russia's slaughtering of Muslims is still continuing and will not end except with a bloody war," the statement said. Khaled Islambouli was the Egyptian army officer who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

Islambouli was a member of the Jihad group, part of which integrated into al-Qaeda in the 1990s under Ayman al-Zawahri, the top aide to Saudi-born al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. An FSB spokesman said: "We do not comment on this kind of statement without further details."

The FSB had no fresh information on the Tu-134. News agencies said no relatives had come forward to claim the remains of one passenger, a 27-year-old woman who gave a Chechen surname when buying her ticket.

A source at the investigating commission told Itar-Tass news agency that the presence of Chechen surnames among the passengers "could not fail to raise suspicion". Moderate Chechen separatists deny any part in the crashes.

27 АВГУСТА 15:41

[Mister Frag 0]

And from http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/08/28/russia.security/index.html

Quote[/b] ]Explosives find in 2nd Russian jet

Moscow orders tougher airline flight security

Saturday, August 28, 2004 Posted: 10:56 AM EDT (1456 GMT)

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Explosives have been found in the wreckage of the second of two jets which crashed almost simultaneously this week, Russia's FSB security service told CNN.

"Additional examination of the fragments of the Tu-134 aircraft which crashed on Tuesday ... has revealed traces of hexogen," an FSB spokesman said.

The FSB said on Friday that hexogen, more widely known as RDX, had been found in the wreckage of the other Tu-154 plane which crashed on Tuesday in southern Russia.

CNN's Paula Hancocks said that the investigation was now firmly focused on terrorism as the likely cause of the crashes.

She said hexogen has been used in previous attacks in Russia blamed on Chechen separatists -- including the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow.

Until now. Russian Investigators have carefully avoided any suggestion that Chechen militants were behind the crashes.

But Russian media have speculated that two passengers, believed to be Chechen women, blew up the planes in the run-up to Sunday's Chechen election certain to return a pro-Moscow president.

Moscow toughened security measures for airline flights Saturday and vowed to prevent any recurrence of the twin air crashes.

Transport Minister Igor Levitin said his concern was to ensure safe air travel. Safety measures, previously undertaken solely by airports, would now be shared with the Interior Ministry.

"From today, they (Interior Ministry officials) are being included in teams conducting searches," Levitin, ordered by President Vladimir Putin to head a commission investigating the crashes, said in an interview.

"We want to toughen all requirements in terms of cargo and baggage ... Passengers must be made to feel that everything is in order once they are seated in an aircraft."

Authorities understood that the virtually simultaneous crashes were "an extraordinary event ... We must look thoroughly into this to understand what happened and take measures to ensure it does not happen again."

Levitin said ministers wanted to enshrine tough regulations in a law on air safety. Airports were to be provided with new detection equipment partly financed by the government.

The FSB had earlier said traces of an explosive used in past attacks blamed on Chechen militants were found in the wreckage of the Tu-154 plane, which crashed en route from Moscow to the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Later it said the same explosive had been found at the crash site of the Tu-134 plane which came down on its way to Volgograd in central Russia.

NTV television, reporting from the Tu-134 crash site, earlier said investigators were leaning towards the notion that the second aircraft had also been blown up.

The television showed coffins draped with wreaths in Volgograd, with groups of women dressed in black seated nearby. At least one funeral was shown taking place in Sochi.

Russian media said investigators were trying to determine whether two women with Chechen names were linked to the crashes. The daily Izvestia reported that the brother of one woman had been seized by Russian forces in Chechnya three years ago.

Chechen separatists have been blamed for numerous bombings and other attacks in Russia in recent years, including the seizure of hundreds of hostages at a Moscow theater that ended with more than 100 hostages dead.

Chechen Interior Minister Alu Alkhanov, backed by the Kremlin, is almost sure to win Sunday's poll, called to replace a president assassinated in May. He faces six obscure rivals.