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© St. Petersburg Times, published October 6, 2001
SOCHI, Russia -- 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 their loved ones.
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 on Thursday.
U.S. intelligence officials think 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."
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.
Rushailo said Moscow asked Israel and the United States for help recovering the black box. Israeli experts were expected Sunday to join the investigation.
He said the salvage was complicated by high waves and the Black Sea's strong currents.
Alexander Moskalyets, the deputy emergency situations minister, said another vessel that specialized in deep-sea work would join the search today.
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, said Gleb Gutiyev, a Sochi city spokesman.