REUTERS - Russia
expanded its search on Monday for the remains of a military plane that crashed
into the Black Sea, killing all 92 on board, and said pilot error or a
technical fault - but not terrorism - were likely to have caused the tragedy.
The plane, a
Russian Defence Ministry TU-154, was carrying dozens of Red Army Choir singers
and dancers to Syria to entertain Russian troops in the run-up to the New Year.
Nine Russian
journalists were also on board as well as military servicemen and Elizaveta
Glinka, a prominent member of President Vladimir Putin's advisory human rights
council.
Divers and
submersibles seeking the jet's flight recorders scoured a stretch of water
roughly 1 mile (1.6 km) from the southern Russian resort of Sochi.
Four small
pieces of fuselage were recovered at a depth of 27 metres (89 ft), the RIA news
agency said, but strong currents and deep water were complicating the search.
Major-General
Igor Konashenkov, a Defence Ministry spokesman, said 11 bodies had been
recovered. The ministry denied a RIA report that some of the dead passengers
had been wearing life jackets.
He said the
sea and air search operation, already involving around 3,500 people, was being
expanded.
Putin
designated Monday a nationwide day of mourning and flags flew at half-mast and
TV stations removed entertainment shows from their schedules.
Prime Minister
Dmitry Medvedev led a minute of silence at a government meeting, and mourners
laid flowers at Sochi airport, from where the plane took off.
Kremlin
spokesman Dmitry Peskov said military investigators were considering all
theories, but that the version it may have been "a terrorist act" was
"nowhere near the top of the list".
FOUR THEORIES
The FSB
security service said it had not so far found any evidence pointing to foul
play and was investigating four possible causes, the Interfax news agency
reported.
Those were
that a foreign object had fallen into an engine, that the fuel had been poor
quality causing engine failure, pilot error, or a technical fault.
Mourners left
flowers in front of the Moscow headquarters of the Russian Army's Alexandrov
song and dance troupe, more than 60 of whom were killed in the crash.
A handwritten
note outside the office of Glinka, the late humanitarian worker on board, read:
"We want V.V. Putin to ban the TU-154."
The Defence
Ministry says the downed jet, a Soviet-era plane built in 1983, had last been
serviced in September and undergone more major repairs in December 2014.
The last big
TU-154 crash was in 2010 when a Polish jet carrying then-president Lech
Kaczynski and much of Poland's political elite went down in western Russia
killing everyone on board.
Russian
authorities have said they have no plans to withdraw the TU-154 from service
for the time being.
Defence
Ministry spokesman Konashenkov said 45 ships, five helicopters, drones, and
more than 100 divers were involved in the wider search, and soldiers were
scouring the Black Sea coastline as well.
He said ten
bodies and 86 body fragments from the crash had been flown to Moscow so that
experts could try to identify them.
REUTERS
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