BBC news report on crash now more is known

Two Russian airliners carrying 90 passengers and crew crashed within minutes of each other after flying out of the same Moscow airport.
One of the planes is reported to have sent out a hijack or distress signal before it vanished from the radar.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the state security services, the FSB, to launch an investigation.

Russia’s UN ambassador said they would be investigating whether terrorism is the cause.

Flight recorders from both planes have been found.

The two planes flew out of Moscow’s Domodedovo airport within 40 minutes of each other on Tuesday evening.

They got into trouble almost simultaneously at about 2300 local time (1900GMT).

Explosion

Wreckage from the first plane, a Tu-134 bound for Volgograd, was found near the village of Buchalki, in the Tula region, about 200km (125 miles) from Moscow.

An official later said all 44 passengers, including nine crew, had been killed.

The small Volga-Aviaexpress airline, which owned the plane, said all necessary security checks had been completed, and it was being piloted by the firm’s director, Yury Baichkin.

There were reports from eyewitnesses that the aircraft exploded in the air before it crashed.

Air traffic controllers reportedly said no distress signals were received from the crew before the crash.

The second plane, a Tu-154 heading for the Black Sea resort of Sochi, disappeared from the radar at around the same time.

Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted a source as saying the plane, carrying 46 people including eight crew, sent out a hijack alert shortly before it vanished.

Later, Interfax quoted an unnamed law enforcement source as saying it had been a distress signal.

Bad weather hampered the search for wreckage, which was found about nine hours after the plane’s disappearance near the southern Russian town of Rostov-on-Don, some 1,000 km (600 miles) south of Moscow.

Russian air company Sibir said it owned the plane.

Terrorism fear

“The fact that both planes took off from one airport and disappeared from radars around the same time can show it was a planned action,” said one aviation source quoted by Interfax.

President Putin, currently on holiday in Sochi, ordered the FSB to investigate the crashes.

Wreckage from the plane crashes were strewn over wide areas
FSB investigations are normally held only when an accident occurs in suspicious circumstances, a security source told Reuters news agency.

Security has been tightened at Russian airports.

When told of the two crashes, Russia’s UN ambassador, Andrey Denisov, said: “Now we have to see if there’s terrorism,” reported the Associated Press news agency.

There are fears militants linked to a bloody uprising in the southern republic of Chechnya may be behind the crashes.

Correspondents say Chechen rebels had threatened to disrupt presidential elections in Chechnya due in a few days’ time.

The former president, Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed by a rebel bomb in May.