MOSCOW, 21 August - Investigators confirmed yesterday that Chechen rebels had shot down a Russian military helicopter killing 114 soldiers, in the worst loss of the 35-month war which led to a top general being suspended from duty.
"Our latest information is that 147 people were on board the helicopter when it crashed. We have 33 survivors," a grim-faced Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said in televised remarks while inspecting the crash site on the eastern outskirts of Grozny, capital of the breakaway republic.
Ivanov immediately suspended Col. Gen. Vitaly Pavlov, a Soviet-era war hero who was in charge of the army's air force, for failing to follow proper security procedures and ordered a halt to all flights of the jumbo Mi-26 helicopter over Chechnya.
Meanwhile, Interfax quoted sources in the Russian military command as saying investigators had discovered a Strela missile launcher used by the fighters, and were discarding an earlier theory that the crash was caused by engine failure.
"All the evidence was presented to the investigators and Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov" who also arrived at the scene, the source told Interfax.
Embarrassed army officials had initially refused to believe Chechen claims and suspected that the Mi-26 helicopter - the world's largest and known as The Cow - had crashed into a minefield on Grozny's outskirts after running into engine trouble.
The Kommersant business daily described terrible scenes at the crash site where survivors, suffocating from an onboard fire, broke the helicopter's windows to pile out of the chopper - only to be blown up by mines. "There was no way of rescuing them," one witness told the daily. "The places needed to be de-mined first."
Itar-Tass cited "several eyewitnesses" within the military as saying that they saw the chopper being hit by what looked like either a small missile or heavy machine gun fire. (The Independent)
