Plane Wreckage Gathered as Kin Go to Russia to Identify Victims

Salvage workers scrambled Friday to collect wreckage from the Black Sea, gathering evidence that may tell whether a terrorist attack or an errant Ukrainian missile brought down a Russian plane full of Israelis. Grief-stricken relatives gathered in this southern resort to identify bodies of victims.

Seventy-eight people--most of them Russian immigrants in Israel returning to Russia for the Jewish Sukkot holiday--were killed when the Sibir Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk exploded over the Black Sea on Thursday.

U.S. intelligence officials believe the plane was accidentally hit by a Ukrainian S-200, or SA-5, missile--a large surface-to-air missile built to shoot down heavy bombers flying at high altitudes.

The United States tracked the missile during a Ukrainian military exercise with satellites that sense the heat of its launch, and officials said the time of the launch coincided with the disaster.

Ukrainian officials heatedly denied the allegation, but Ukrainian Prime Minister Anatoliy Kinakh appeared to soften Kiev’s stance on Friday with the comment that the U.S. version “has a right to exist.”

He told Ukrainian journalists that there were no official conclusions from the Ukrainian investigation, the Interfax news agency reported. He also said that if there were “serious information” about Ukrainian involvement, the U.S. side would have given it to Moscow.

Earlier Friday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov sent an urgent request to the Pentagon for “documentary data” that could prove or disprove its officials’ contention that a missile had brought the plane down, Interfax said. Ivanov said he had not yet received a reply.

Vladimir Rushailo, the head of Russia’s Security Council, who is overseeing the investigation into Thursday’s crash, said debris was spread over a 12-mile-wide area. Officials warned that it would be difficult to locate the plane’s black box because the Black Sea is more than 7,000 feet deep at the crash site and the bottom is covered with 12 inches of silt.

Rushailo said Moscow asked Israel and the United States for help recovering the black box. Israeli experts were expected to join the investigation.

He said the salvage effort was complicated by deteriorating weather, high waves and the Black Sea’s strong currents, which could sweep key evidence far away from the crash site.

Because of high hydrogen sulfide and low oxygen content, visibility in the sea is notoriously poor, said Mikhail Vinogradov, a Russian oceanographer, in an interview on Russia’s state-controlled ORT television.

“It’s like working with a headlight that can’t cut through a fog,” he said.

Alexander Moskalyets, the deputy emergency situations minister, said another vessel that specializes in deep-sea work will join the search this weekend. He said the ships would work around the clock and would be joined after dawn by airplanes that could help spot the wreckage.

The Tupolev 154 went down 114 miles off the Russian coastal city of Adler, near Sochi. The plane carried 66 passengers and 12 crew members, according to Gleb Gutiyev, a Sochi city spokesman.

Their relatives began arriving in Sochi from Novosibirsk on Friday, pacing the halls of a local hotel. Others were expected from Israel on Sunday.

“My daughter was flying to visit us, with my grandson,” Pavel Kopchevets said, looking grimly at the floor and blinking back tears. “There’s nothing more to say. Forgive me.”

Police were stationed outside the gray concrete city morgue as grieving relatives went inside.

Rabbi Ari Edelkopf said the local Jewish community was trying to help the family members.

“The Jewish community here is shocked and we are all working together to bring everything back to normal, respecting the dead and taking care of all the logistics,” he said.

Crying relatives also gathered Friday at the Tel Aviv airport. Among them was Haim Kuznitsov, who lost his 76-year-old mother-in-law, Sarah Kamcha, who was going to Novosibirsk to visit her sister.

“When we escorted her to the plane in the morning, she held my hand in a certain way that made me feel that she was afraid to fly there,” Kuznitsov told Israel Radio. “She didn’t say anything, but I felt like she wasn’t feeling good about it, and I was afraid to leave her, as if my heart was saying something.”

Two of 14 bodies brought ashore had been identified, said Alexander Moskalyets, an official with the Emergency Situations Ministry.

Parts of the fuselage and cockpit were recovered along with a door of the plane, Gutiyev said.

Holes were found in the door, leading to speculation they may have been caused by gunfire. Rushailo said it was premature to conclude holes in the cabin door had come from bullets, which might support Russia’s theory that the plane was targeted by terrorists.

“We don’t talk about theories or guesses; we say only what is established fact,” Rushailo said.

Vladimir Tasun, a civil aviation official for the Siberian region where the plane was bound, told Russia’s NTV television Friday that an air traffic controller in Rostov saw a bright spot approaching the plane before it disappeared from the radar screen.

Ukrainian officials denied the U.S. missile claim, saying they had launched only short-range missiles that couldn’t reach the plane flying some 155 miles away.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksandr Kuzmuk said Ukrainian and Russian monitoring showed the missiles hit their targets at the calculated times, and that the time differed from the crash of the plane. None of the 23 rockets launched were in the direction of the crash, he said.

However, the Interfax-Military News Agency cited Ukrainian defense officials saying that a radar-guided missile could have deviated from its target and homed in on the airliner instead.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry refused to comment on the report.