Russia’s security service announced Friday that investigators had found traces of an explosive in the wreckage of one of the two passenger airliners that crashed simultaneously on Tuesday, and declared its downing a terrorist act. The announcement came as an Islamic extremist group said its fighters had hijacked the two planes to avenge the deaths of Muslims in the war in Chechnya and elsewhere. The evidence of an explosive aboard one of the planes, Sibir Airlines Flight 1047, is the strongest indication yet that deliberate acts, not human or mechanical errors as Russian officials initially suggested, were involved in the crashes, which killed a total of 89 people. If that is confirmed, as is now expected, the twin disasters would be the country’s worst act of terrorism in the skies. Officials said investigators were focusing attention on two women with Chechen names – one aboard each plane – as possible suicide bombers, raising the specter of an ominous new front in Russia’s fight against terrorism. In the last two years women known as “black widows” and said to be avenging the deaths of husbands, brothers or sons in Chechnya have been involved in some of the Russia’s most lethal suicide attacks, including the bombing of a subway train in Moscow in February that killed at least 41 people. None have attacked the country’s airliners before. Full Story
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