Explosives found in plane wreck

Explosives of a kind used by Chechen rebels have been found in one of two airliners that crashed almost simultaneously, pointing to a terrorist attack, Russian investigators said yesterday.

The FSB security service declined to comment on an Internet claim by an Islamist group that its followers had brought the planes down on Tuesday, killing at least 89 people, to avenge the killing of Muslims in Russia's rebel Chechnya province.

But it said it had identified "a number of people with possible links to the terrorist act".

Investigators were tracing the background of two passengers with Chechen surnames, one from each plane.

Chechnya's Islamist rebels have staged spectacular attacks in the past to press their independence drive, and threatened more attacks in the run-up to the election of a president to head the pro-Moscow regional government tomorrow.

But moderate Chechen rebels accused Russia's special forces of spreading misinformation and denied any connection with the Islamist group, which called itself the Islambouli Brigade.

The Tu-154, bound for Sochi on the Black Sea, crashed near the southern city of Rostov-on-Don less than four minutes after a Tu-134 flying to Volgograd crashed near Tula, south of Moscow. Both flew from Moscow's Domodedovo airport.

"During the examination of the wreckage of the Tu-154 plane traces of explosives were found," said a spokeswoman for the FSB, entrusted by President Vladimir Putin with the probe.

She said the explosive was of a type used in some previous attacks blamed on Chechen separatists, including apartment block bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk in 1999 that killed over 200 - attacks that Chechen rebels accused Moscow of staging.

The head of the investigating commission said on Thursday night that the crew had activated a distress signal shortly before crashing, but failed to provide voice confirmation.

Mr Putin, now in his second term, has been plagued by Chechen rebel attacks including a major raid in the regional capital Grozny last weekend.