Russia's 9/11?

Terror Fears | Twin plane crashes mourned with more questions than answers | Bob Jones

In a field 120 miles outside Moscow, lines of soldiers in red berets and camouflage retreated on Aug. 26 from what could prove to be the latest front in Russia's ongoing war on terror. Two days after two commercial jetliners fell from the sky within minutes of each other, the search for bodies was over. But the search for answers was just beginning.

As investigators moved in to replace soldiers at the twin crash sites—one near Moscow, the other farther south, near the Black Sea—officials insisted no possible cause was being ruled out. It might have been weather, they said. It might have been bad fuel, or even human error. But Russia's independent newspapers were having none of it. "Russia now has a Sept. 11," the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta said in a headline, echoing similar reports from across the country. The facts, at first glance, appeared to back them up.