Parts of crashed Russian plane found in Black Sea

SOCHI, RUSSIA

Russian rescuers found Dec. 26 the first parts of the Syria-bound military plane that plunged into the Black Sea, as officials said they do not suspect terrorism as the reason for the crash that killed 92 people on board.

The Tu-154 jet, whose passengers included more than 60 members of the internationally-renowned Red Army Choir, was heading to Moscow’s military base in Syria when it went down off the resort city of Sochi shortly after take-off Dec. 25.

Investigators have yet to confirm the cause of the crash, but officials said that an act of terror was not being considered as a possible explanation, despite the plane and its black boxes still being underwater.

A spokeswoman for the Sochi-based search and rescue branch of the emergency ministry confirmed that parts of the plane had been found underwater.

“The debris is at the depth of 27 meters one mile from shore,” spokeswoman Rimma Chernova told AFP.

The Russian military added that divers had retrieved “two elements of the plane’s control mechanism.”

Russia’s federal security service said it is looking into four suspected causes of the crash, which do not include terrorism.

“No signs or facts pointing to a possible act of terror have been received at this time,” Russia’s Federal Security Service said in a statement carried by national news agencies.

The probe is focusing on a pilot error, a technical fault, bad fuel and a foreign object in the engine as four main scenarios, it added.

The military has cordoned off part of the Sochi shore Dec. 26, with soldiers standing in a chain about 20 meters apart, while motor boats participating in the search regularly unloading at the pier, an AFP photographer saw.

More than three thousand people are racing to find the remaining bodies and debris in a massive operation that includes 45 vessels, planes, helicopters, and drones, along with divers and remotely-operated deep-water machines.  

Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said some of the bodies could have already been carried off by the “strong current” to Abkhazia, the separatist region of Georgia, and some of its own rescue workers have joined the search operation.

Along with the first 10 bodies, 86 body fragments were brought to the Russian capital for DNA analysis, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.

He said searchers have finished looking over the on-land territory around the crash site while divers are working over an area with a radius of 500 meters.

The passenger jet went down on the morning of Dec. 25 minutes after taking off at 5:25 a.m. (2:25 a.m. GMT) from Sochi’s airport, where it had stopped to refuel after flying out from the Chkalovsky military aerodrome in the Moscow region.

Onboard were 64 members of the Alexandrov Ensemble - the army’s official musical group, also known as Red Army Choir - and their conductor Valery Khalilov.

“The ensemble has been orphaned by a third,” said state channel Rossiya.