KEVIN O’FLYNN in Moscow, SUZANNE GOLDENBERG in Tel Aviv and OWEN BOWCOTT | Friday
A RUSSIAN airliner that exploded in mid-air and plunged into the Black Sea, killing all 78 passengers and crew, may have been brought down accidentally by Ukrainian ground-to-air missiles fired during military exercises, American defence officials suggested yesterday.
Ukrainian officials denied responsibility last night and Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said it was possible that the plane had been targeted by terrorists.
The destruction of the Tupolev 154 jet, en route from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk in Siberia, sent a shiver of fear around the world’s airlines which remain in a state of frantic alert following the multiple hijackings and crashes which destroyed the World Trade Centre in New York and damaged the Pentaton in Washington on September 11.
Earlier this week an Indian Airlines Boeing 737 was grounded at Delhi airport following a false alarm over a hijacking.
Israel grounded outgoing flights from Tel Aviv and British Airways diverted a Tel Aviv-bound Boeing 777, on its way from Heathrow, to Cyprus.
”The plane fell into the sea, and there was another explosion in the sea.” It was late morning when an Armenian airliner flying nearby reported seeing an explosion and flames on the Sibir Airline Tu-154 shortly before it disintegrated around 180km west of the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Most of the 66 passengers were Israeli citizens; the 12 crew were Russian.
Garik Ovanisian, pilot of the Armenian An-24, said his plane was at 6_300 metres above the Black Sea. ”I saw the explosion on the plane, which was above me at an altitude of 11_000 metres,” Mr Ovanisian said.
”The plane fell into the sea, and there was another explosion in the sea. After that I saw a big white spot and I had the impression that oil was burning.”
In Washington, Pentagon sources were quick to suggest that the plane could have been brought down after a Ukrainian military exercise, involving surface-to-air missiles on the Crimean peninsula, went wrong.
The Ukrainian military was conducting an air defence training exercise off the Crimean coast that involved warships and aircraft, the US defence official added. But the Ukrainian government was adamant that its forces were not responsible. ”All the rockets used during the training exercise had guaranteed self-destruction mechanisms in case they deviated from their course,” the defence minister, Oleksandr Kuzmuk, said.
Russian defence agencies initially cast doubt on American reports. The theory ”did not deserve attention,” Interfax reported.
The Ukrainian exercises took place more than 200 miles from the site of the disaster, sources insisted, and the rockets used would not have sufficient range.
Similar accidents have occurred before. In 1988, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian airbus in the Gulf after mistaking it for an F-14 fighter which the commander believed was about to attack his vessel.
Russian television showed fragments of the plane floating on the Black Sea. The waters are at least 3,000 feet deep at that point and it will be difficult to retrieve the black box flight recorder.
Russian airline safety has improved since the early 1990s when accidents were relatively common. The Tu-154 is considered one of Russia’s safest planes, although it has been involved in nearly 30 disasters since the first aircraft was built in 1968. Earlier this year 143 people were killed when a Tu-154 crashed near the Siberian city of Irkutsk.
Israel’s prime minister, Ariel Sharon, said it was a black day in the country’s history and announced that there would be an official investigation of the crash. — The Guardian