So far, not alot of coverage (far as I can tell).
Possible Chechnyan terror in Russia doesn’t rank just yet in the USA.
Oh shit… CNN is now reporting that (according to Interfax), one of the planes sent out a hijack alert before it crashed…
If I understand pilot141 correctly, a flame out is the absence of fire in an engine, not a surplus of it. Basically the plane just turns into a big glider, right?
Geez. Question now, I guess, is was there anybody special on those planes, were there famous landmarks in their flight path, and did the passengers or the hijackers bring them down?
Those poor people.
Actually, no- or at least, not so far. Both flights left from Moscow, and you’d think the biggest targets were IN Moscow. Maybe it was just the planes that were the targets?
Well, now Reuters is reporting that one of the planes “sent a hijack alarm before disappearing”. Hmm…
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&e=1&u=/nm/20040825/wl_nm/crash_russia_dc
I wonder if this means the passengers fought back?
There are so many what-ifs here… seems like the news has been very slow in coming.
I’m going to chime in and say that Russia has been one of the most vocal opponents of the US’s current middle eastern policy. If it was “terrorist” in nature, I would guess that it’s more likely to be of the home-grown variety.
-lv
Yeah, when I saw this news, my first thought was that Chechen separatists have just bought themselves a whole new round of brutal crackdowns, perhaps regardless of whether it was them or not.
Of course, this’ll just extend the tension and death, but things were already pretty bad.
Chechen rebels seems like a likely possibility right now. The elections in Chechenya are coming up, and one of the planes was headed for Putin’s holiday destination.
Interesting link to the Gimli Glider incident up there. A fantastic story if ever there was one. Incidently, the plane involved in that incident flies to this day, still with Air Canada. It should be stressed that such success stories are rare, however. A jet engined passenger plane flaming out at altitude will most likely not reach the ground in one piece.
That being said, it looks like we can pretty much rule out fuel contamination, what with the hijack alert coming from one of the planes. If this turns out to be Chechen terrorism, I wonder how long Putin is going to hang on to the useless cause of keeping Chechenya occupied. Not that it excuses the terrorrism, of course, don’t get me wrong.
Oh, there was a midair explosion reported by witnesses on the ground for at least one of the planes, leading to the possibility of someone having a bomb on board. The Dutch news this morning reported that while Moscow has a very safe airport, it is not unusual for Russian stewardesses to sell the last remaining seats of the planes pretty much on the tarmac. Any passenger buying such tickets would then board the plane without going through regular security procedures.
If that’s truly the case, then this was a disaster waiting to happen all along. 
We did have coverage here on the local news stations here in the Chicago area last night, so while it wasn’t the very first story covered there was coverage in the “international” segment. Certainly got more coverage than the folks stranded at O’Hare when BA canceled a bunch of flight over the past couple days which I don’t recall mentioned at all even if it was both local and international.
When it comes to aviation terror, I’m not sure it matters much if you kill 20 or 200 – the point being that you’re knocking large planes out of the air and killing the general public.
As for not much information coming through at first, well, it WAS dark when the planes went down, wasn’t it? They have to find the wreckage and then wait for daylight to start investigating. I’d rather wait for more info than be subjected to the talking heads endlessly repeating “I don’t know” or rampant speculation.
Wasn’t the wreckage from at least one of the airplanes found in two different locations? That sounds like a break-up in the air… which could be a bomb, as one possibility, but planes have come apart in mid-air for reasons other than delibrate human acts.
Has anyone tried to take credit for this?
So far, no. The Chechen rebel leaders are even actively denying any involvement, stating they only target military goals, not civilian ones. That’s a dubious claim at best, but there you go.
I doubt that the guy who used to run the KGB would give in terrorists.
Yes, I’m sure that everyone in that Moscow theatre where Nord-Ost was playing was a member of the military. :rolleyes:
If this isn’t terrorism, I will personally swim over to Holland and spit shine all of Coldy’s wooden clogs.
To be fair -and don’t think for one minute I’m defending terrorism here- I seem to recall that people only started dying in that theater when the Russian troops started tossing gas canisters inside. Prior to that, it was a pure hostage situation. So, I suppose the Chechen rebels could reasonably claim that it was not the intent to have civilian casualties. Then again, there have been some subway bombings as well as the bombing at a rock concert last year that have been claimed, all taking civilian lives.
Yeh, so-called “freedom fighters” around the world tend to have a, um, flexible definition of what are valid targets – and the “collateral damage” is, of course, the evil occupiers’ fault, if only they backed out this would not happen :rolleyes:
Well they seem to target busses throughout the world so I think they take what they can get.
At least two people were shot and killed by the terrorists prior to the assault. They were about to kill a lot more. There is no reason to believe they were not prepared to kill more. All or almost all of the people who died in that theater could have lived if the Russians had planned ahead and had medical personal on hand. They died from positional asphyxia and not the gas. There was an incredible documentary on PBS about it using the terrorists own footage shot inside the theater. I’m not sure of the name or if it was shown in Europe.
Well, I certainly recall seeing the terrorists’ own footage on TV here. Thanks for the correction on the two killed captives before the Russian military intervened - I was going from memory. At any rate, I was by no means excusing their actions, let’s make that clear.