RUSSIAN PROSECUTORS RULE OUT TERRORISM IN BLACK SEA PLANE CRASH

RIA Novosti, Russia
May 3 2006

MOSCOW, May 3 (RIA Novosti) – The Prosecutor General’s Office has
ruled out terrorism as the cause of an air crash above the Black Sea
that claimed 113 lives Wednesday morning.

“The only thing that can be said about the versions of what happened is
that a terrorist attack has been completely ruled out,” the Office’s
press service said Wednesday. “There is no objective information for
[a terrorist attack].”

The Emergency Situations Ministry said earlier that bad weather was
the most likely cause of the tragedy.

A total of 113 people, including eight crewmembers, were on board
of the A-320 plane, which belonged to Armenia’s Armavia Airlines,
when it crashed en route from the capital Yerevan to the airport
servicing the Russian resort of Sochi.

“The bodies of 46 people have been retrieved so far,” the prosecutors
said, adding that the tail section and the chassis of the plane had
been found.

The Russian Foreign Ministry earlier said 26 Russian citizens were
on the passenger list, but prosecutors in the Krasnosdar Territory
said there were 27 Russians on board.

“We received contradictory information about the number of Russian
citizens on board the plane,” a local prosecutor said. “But the
migration service has confirmed there were 27 Russians.”

May 5 and 6 have been declared mourning days in Armenia, and May 5
in Russia.

The greatest loss of life in a crash involving an two-engine A-320,
which was first built in 1984 and remains the most popular Airbus on
the market, occurred in August 2000, when a Gulf Air plane crashed
off Bahrain on a flight from Cairo, killing all 143 people on board.