Russia Mounts Search After Plane Crash and Says Terrorism Is Unlikely
SOCHI, Russia — Russia mounted an expansive search-and-recovery operation in the Black Sea on Monday for the passengers and the fuselage of a military passenger plane that crashed a day earlier, killing all 92 people on board, including dozens of members of a storied army choir.
In Moscow, famous performers and ordinary citizens, some of them in tears, dropped flowers at the entrance to the headquarters of the choir, the Alexandrov Ensemble. Another mountain of red carnations and candles piled up outside the Ostankino television center, as a tribute to nine journalists who were accompanying the choir to the Khmeimim Air Base in Syria.
The plane was carrying 68 performers and staff members of the ensemble, including an army choir and orchestra loved for its renditions of classical Russian songs and folk tunes.
The most likely area where the plane plunged into the water moments after taking off from the southwestern resort city of Sochi has been identified, Lt. Gen. Viktor N. Bondarev, commander of the Russian Air Force, said at an early morning news conference at the airport.
General Bondarev said that he did not expect the plane’s fin, where the flight recorders are situated, to be as damaged as the fuselage, raising hopes that the recorders might be intact. Several chunks of the fuselage were located on Monday on the seabed about a mile offshore, initially by sonar and then by divers, the Ministry of Emergency Situations announced.
(Published 2016/12/26 at 7:00 pm)
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