Terrorism blamed in Russia crashes

MOSCOW — One of two Russian airliners that crashed nearly simultaneously was brought down by a terrorist act, officials said Friday, after finding traces of explosives in the plane's wreckage. An Islamic militant group claimed responsibility for the attack in a Web statement.

The planes, with 90 people aboard, went down within 20 minutes of each other Tuesday night. In Washington, a Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there is mounting evidence that both crashes were acts of terrorism.

Traces of the explosive hexogen were found in the remains of one of the planes, a Tu-154, security service spokesman Nikolai Zakharov said. No results from the investigation of the other crashed plane, a Tu-134, have been announced.

"According to preliminary information, at least one of the air crashes ... has been the result of a terrorist act," a spokesman for the Federal Security Service, Sergei Ignatchenko, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

The Tu-154 was carrying 46 people when it crashed en route to the Black Sea resort of Sochi. The other flight had 44 people aboard, heading to the southern city of Volgograd, when it went down.

NATO's chief blamed terrorism for both crashes.

"I condemn in the strongest possible terms the apparent act of barbaric terrorism ... resulting in the crash of two Russian passenger aircraft, and the senseless loss of innocent lives," NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said Friday.

Hexogen, the explosive found in the Tu-154, is the material that Russian officials said was used in the 1999 apartment bombings that killed some 300 people in Russia, an attack blamed on Chechen separatists.

Despite the suspicious timing of the crashes and the fact they took place five days before an election in Chechnya opposed by separatists, Russian officials had kept open the possibility they were caused by bad fuel or human error.

A Web site connected to Islamic militants published a statement on Friday — signed the "Islambouli Brigades" — claiming responsibility for the crashes. The statement's authenticity could not immediately be confirmed.

The statement said five "mujahedeen" — holy fighters — were aboard each plane. It said the two planes were downed as part of a series of operations "to extend support and victory to our Muslim brothers in Chechnya and other Muslim areas which suffer from Russian faithlessness."

The Federal Security Service declined to comment on the statement.

Russian officials have contended that the rebels fighting Russian forces in Chechnya for nearly five years receive help from foreign terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida.