MOSCOW – Russian authorities announced Friday that “a terrorist act” had brought down at least one of the two airline jets that crashed this week as investigators raised suspicions that two Chechen women aboard the flights might have been suicide bombers.
Investigators have found “traces of an explosive substance” of a type previously used by Chechen guerrillas in the wreckage of the plane, Sergei Ignatchenko, an FSB spokesman, told the Russian news agency Itar-Tass.
“According to preliminary information, at least one of the air crashes, that in the Rostov region, has been a result of a terrorist act,” he said.
Russian officials had previously said that terrorism was only one of many possible causes being investigated in the downing Tuesday evening of the two jets. A total of 90 people aboard died in the crashes.
The Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, also expressed suspicions Friday about the roles possibly played in the twin tragedies by the two Chechen women, Itar-Tass reported.
One of the women, identified as S. Dzhebirkhanova, reportedly checked in for the Sibir Airlines Tu-154 flight headed from Moscow to the Black Sea resort of Sochi that crashed near the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, the news service reported. The second woman, Amanta Nagayeva, was listed on the Volga-Aviaexpress Tu-134 flight from Moscow to Volgograd that crashed about 130 miles south of Moscow at nearly the same time.
Authorities said that in neither case had anyone come forward to claim the two bodies.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
