MOSCOW, 28 August 2004 — Russia said yesterday “terrorists” were behind a passenger jet crash, as an Islamic group vowing support for Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for that attack and the downing of another airliner at almost the same moment.
“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 that has both military and civilian uses, in the wreckage of one of two planes that crashed almost simultaneously 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.
There was also no official assertion of a link between the attackers and rebels in the separatist 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.
One official told AFP that the remains of a female passenger thought to be a resident of Chechnya who had been on one of two Russian planes were being closely examined for traces of explosives.
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Emergency Situations said the remains of that particular passenger were more badly damaged and more widely scattered on the ground than any others.
Investigators also said they were looking for information on another female passenger aboard the other plane, identified by Russian news agencies only by her family name, Djebirkhanova, also thought to be of Chechen origin.
Interest in the two women was heightened by the fact that no family or friends had yet come forward to identify their bodies, the reports said.
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 km south of Moscow. Everyone on the two planes, 89 people in all, died.
An Islamic group calling itself the Islambouli Brigades claimed responsibility for the downing of both planes, hailing it as a first strike to stop Moscow’s fight against separatists in Chechnya.
“The Islambouli Brigades declare that our Mujahedeen have succeeded in hijacking two Russian planes,” said the group in a statement posted on a website. “The Mujahedeen have succeeded despite the problems that they encountered at the beginning. There were five Mujahedeen 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 statement warned.
The authenticity of the statement could not immediately be confirmed and Russian officials declined to comment.
A group by the same name claimed attacks in Pakistan earlier this month. The use of the name Islambouli was thought to be a reference to Lt. Khaled Al-Islambouli, who took part in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Cairo in 1981.
Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency quoted an anonymous source as saying 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 p.m. on Aug. 24. After that, the plane disappeared from the radar.”
