Posted on 10/04/2001 11:44:49 AM PDT by matcrazy
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 an anti-aircraft missile fired during a military training exercise in Ukraine appeared to have accidentally brought down the plane.
``This looks to be a military training exercise gone terribly awry,'' said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry, however, denied any of its weapons could have hit a civilian aircraft.
Earlier, President Vladimir Putin said terrorism could be the cause of the crash.
In Washington, the U.S. official said the missile was fired from a land-based launcher in the Crimean region of Ukraine. It was believed to be an S-200, a surface-to-air missile of Russian design that is guided by radar to its target. The S-200 flies faster than three times the speed of sound, has a range of up to 185 miles and can hit targets above 100,000 feet.
Despite initial fears the plane was destroyed in a terrorist attack, the downing of the airliner appeared to be accidental, several 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 explosion 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 Israeli, said Sergei Moslayov, a duty officer at the Emergency Situations Ministry.
The military 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.
But Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Kostyantyn Khivrenko said all the fired missiles were accounted for and none had come near the area of the explosion.
``The direction of the firing and the distance do not correspond to the plane's explosion site either in theory or in practice,'' he said. ``All the hits by the rockets used during the exercise were recorded by corresponding devises and reached their targets.''
The air force and air traffic regulators ``did not record the presence of any civilian aircraft in the exercise area during the maneuvers,'' he said.,
Defense Minister Oleksandr Kuzmuk said in a statement that all the rockets used in the training exercise have ``self-destruction mechanisms in case they deviated from their course.''
At one moment I feel it must be an accident, then they say that all their missiles are accounted for and that the airliner was not in the vicinity of the testing area....
Of course they could be lying, I mean, who would want to admit to a stupid, lethal cock-up like this?
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