Russian Military Plane Carrying The Remains Of TU-154 Lands in Moscow

A Russian military transport plane has brought to this capital 10 dead bodies and 84 fragments of people who were on board the crashed TU-154 in Sochi, amidst the national mourning of the nation.

The Ministry of Defense airplane also transported here pieces of the aircraft for investigation after the disaster just two minutes after the TU-154 took off with 92 people on board, including eight crew members.

After a 24 hour-search divided in three shifts, in an operation involving 3,500 soldiers, there were rescued a total of 11 corpses and 154 fragments of the bodies of those travelling yesterday to the Syrian province of Latakia.

The bodies and remains of the deceased are taken to the 111 Forensic Center of the Ministry of Defense in this capital.

According to the transport minister Maxim Sokolov, head of the state commission to organize the search, 39 ships, 135 divers, and seven deep water machines, five helicopters and two bathyscaphs participated in the operation.

Sokolov declared that after the search for 10.5 square kilometers, several of the remains of the deceased and parts of the Russian ship could be found outside the Russian border in the self-proclaimed republic of Abkhazia.

But the Russian press reported that 30 Abkhazian rescuers are already working in cooperation with the Russian authorities.

The Transport Minister ruled out terrorism as the main cause of the plane disaster in which eight officers, nine journalists from three national channels and 64 members of the Alexandrov State Academic Singing and Dance Group were traveling.

However, Sokolov said that the final version should be determined by a special investigation group of the military prosecution.

The head of the Russian Aerospace Force said that the today it could be determined the exact location of the plane crash, which fragments were scattered within a radius of 1.5 kilometers and a depth between 50 and 100 meters.

After taking off at 5:25 am from the Adler airport in Sochi en route to the Russian base of Jmeimin, in the Syrian province of Latakia, after making a stop over for fuel supply, the plane disappeared from the radars.

In Grozny, the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadirov, proposed to name Elizabet Glinka to a children's clinic. Glinka ran the philanthropic association Fair Aid, which provided assistance for children with chronic illness or in situations of conflict.