Investigators looking into the crash of a Russian defence plane have not ruled out foul play, a military official said on Thursday. The statement comes days after Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov had said the inquiry would be focused on ascertaining whether a possible pilot error or technical fault caused the mishap, not terrorism. However, neither flight data recorder recovered from the Black Sea indicated any explosion in the aircraft, which crashed on Christmas Day with 92 people aboard, AP reported.
“A terror attack does not always involve an explosion,” said the head of the Defense Ministry committee that is investigating the crash, Russian Air Force Lieutenant General Sergei Bainetov. “Along with an explosion on board, there could have been some mechanical impact.”
Bainetov added that the Tu-154 military aircraft had crashed 70 seconds after taking off from Sochi. Without elaborating, he said that the cockpit conversation recorder revealed the captain saying that a “special situation” had begun to develop on board the plane. “According to a preliminary assessment of information from the flight parameter recorder, there had been no obvious equipment failures” Bainetov said at a press conference.
Moreover, the Russian transport minister said that 19 bodies and more than 230 body fragments had been found so far, and that 13 big pieces of debris and about 2,000 smaller fragments had been recovered from the seabed. Sokolov added that search teams had completed most of their operation to recover bodies and the aircraft’s debris from the crash site.
Russia has suspended the operation of the Tu-154 aircraft pending completion of the investigation. “The aircraft has proven itself well,” Bainetov said, adding that they will likely resume operation only after the investigation is closed.
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