One or more ground-to-air missile, possibly fired during Ukrainian military manoeuvres, were being blamed last night for the crash of a Russian passenger plane, which exploded in mid-air and fell into the Black Sea late yesterday morning. All 76 passengers and crew were killed.
Almost all of the passengers were Israeli citizens recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who were travelling to visit relatives.
Pentagon sources said they had satellite photographs proving that the aircraft was hit by one or two missiles, and there were some suggestions last night that a Ukrainian naval officer had confirmed that his forces were to blame. However, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Defence Ministry denied this, insisting that the plane was far beyond the range of missiles fired in the manoeuvres. He also pointed out that the missiles were equipped with a "self-destruct" mechanism that would have activated had they homed in on an erroneous target.
Israeli officials added that they had received no official indication that Ukrainian missiles were to blame. Nevertheless, Israel's former air force commander, Mr Eitan Ben-Eliahu, said that from the information he had seen concerning the plane's location, the location of the military exercise and the nature of the missiles used by Ukrainian forces, the miss ile-hit scenario was "by far the most likely explanation, and absolutely technically possible".
The explosion, at about 30,000 feet and just over 100 miles off the Russian coast, was witnessed by an Armenian Airlines pilot flying in the same area, who reported the blast to air traffic controllers in southern Russia.
In the fraught climate that now surrounds air travel, the immediate suspicion was that the plane, a Siberian Airlines charter flight from Tel Aviv to the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, had fallen victim to another act of terrorism - either commandeered by hijackers and bombed, or blown up by deliberate missile attack from the ground.
A technical fault was also a possible cause of the tragedy. The airliner, a Tupolev 154, was only 10 years old, but Israeli air transport experts said Russian airlines had a poor maintenance record.
Siberian Airlines officials indicated that the plane, which flies the route once a week, had taken a different flight path yesterday. However, it was unclear whether this was as a result of redirection by air-traffic authorities. Mr Be n-Eliahu suggested that "either the plane drifted far off its intended flight path, or the Ukrainian authorities closed off too limited an area of air space" while they carried out their exercise.
President Putin, who had earlier said that "it was possible that an act of terrorism" was to blame, changed his tone last night and confirmed that ground-to-air missiles had been fired in the Black Sea manoeuvres.
He denied earlier reports that Russian forces had also been involved in the exercise.
Mr. Putin also telephoned the Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, and the two agreed on "full co-operation" in investigating the disaster. An Israeli army rescue team was en route to the scene last night.
Mr Putin said that several bodies had been pulled out of the sea, and that there were no indications of survivors.
As soon as news broke of the crash, Israel closed Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion airport to all inbound and outbound flights. Activity was resumed in early evening, when Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh said he had confirmed that there had been "no security failure" and that there was "no evidence of sabotage" at Ben-Gurion.
Security at the airport is always high, and officials were deeply concerned that a hijacker might have eluded their checks or that a bomb might have been smuggled aboard the plane despite the elaborate precautions.
Both at Ben-Gurion and at Novosibirsk, where the Jewish community numbers 15,000, relatives of the passengers gathered in tearful shock as the news broke. Most of the passengers had immigrated to Israel in the million-strong wave of arrivals from the former Soviet Union over the past decade.
Israel's Deputy Minister of Absorption, Mr Yuri Edelstein, noted last night that the disaster represented a second heavy blow to the Russian immigrant community. In June, when a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 22 Israelis at a Tel Aviv nightclub, almost all of the victims were teenage Russian immigrants.
The senior Ukrainian naval officer who was said to have confirmed that his country's missiles hit the plane was named as Igor Laricev.