Buchalki (AsiaNews/AP) - A Russian airliner crashed and another apparently broke up in the air almost simultaneously after they took off from Moscow's Domodedovo.
A Tu-154 jet, which was carrying at least 46 people to Sochi, disappeared from radar screens over the Rostov region about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) south of Moscow. Another Tu-134 bound to Volgograd with 43 passengers on board crashed in the Tula region, some 200 kilometres south of the capital.
Russian officials left little hope that any of the 89 people on board the two planes could have survived.
The planes had left the airport within 40 minutes of each other Tuesday night and disappeared from radar screens about 11:00 p.m. The Tu-154 airliner that went missing in southern Russia's Rostov region issued a distress signal indicating the plane was being seized.
Interfax quoted an unnamed Russian aviation security expert as saying the fact that the two planes disappeared around the same time raised suspicions of terrorism. Authorities have expressed concern that separatists in war-ravaged Chechnya could carry out attacks linked to this Sunday's election in Grozny.
Farouq Tubulat, spokesman for Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov, told Arab channel al-Jazeera that the Chechen government was not involved in these terrorist attacks: "Our attacks have only military targets. We are victimized by Russian propaganda."