This diary has been updated.
CNN reports that two planes have crashed, separately, within four minutes of each other in Russia. They both originated from the same airport, and were both Tupolev-154's [
Update: Other reports say one was a Tu-154, the other a Tu-134].
AP reports more than 100 people were aboard the two planes, while
Reuters reports of witnesses seeing an explosion prior to one of the crashes. These events occured hours ago, yet the news is only breaking now.
Moscow Times is silent, as are
Pravda and
ITAR-Tass, Russia's official news agency, despite other news outlets sourcing their information to Tass. RBC, Russia's business news channel with ties to CNBC and CNN, can be viewed
live online, but their top news story is a Moscow bus stop bombing that occured earlier in the day. [
Update: RBC is reporting the story now.]
Update: AP has posted a more comprehensive article, which confirms an investigation of terrorism as a possible cause and reports the official story on the second plane is now that it has gone missing. It has been missing for several hours. In addition, the first plane was headed to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where president Vladimir Putin is vacationing. The article points out that Chechnya votes for a new president on Sunday to replace an assassinated pro-Russian president, and mentions Chechen rebels' involvement in previous terrorist acts in Russia.
Update: Runchadrun in the comments links to Airliners.net, which has a long thread on this.
Update: CNN reports none are believed to have survived the first plane crash. The other plane is still reported missing.
Update: There are multiple reports of a fire in Rostov that is believed to be of the second plane's wreckage.
Update: One plane's hijacking signal was activated, says an anonymous Russian official to Interfax, as reported in an AP breaking news alert.
Update: An AP alert quotes officials as saying the wreckage shows the near-simultaneous crashes were not terrorist-related. There's no explanation of how exactly they arrived at this speedy conclusion.