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Traces of explosives found in Russian jet wreckage

Islamic group claims responsibility

AP, AFP, Moscow/ Dubai
Traces of explosives have been found in the wreckage of one of two airliners that crashed nearly simultaneously earlier this week, the Federal Security Service said yesterday, a day after a top official acknowledged that terrorism was the most likely cause of the crashes.
A duty officer at the agency, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, confirmed reports on Russian news agencies that cited agency spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko as saying that "preliminary analysis indicates it was hexogen."
The announcement came several
hours after a Web site known for militant Muslim published a claim of responsibility for the twin crashes, connecting the action to Russia's fight against separatists in Chechnya.
The Russian news reports said the explosive traces were found in the wreckage of a Tu-154 that was one of two planes that crashed Tuesday night, killing at least 89 people.
Although the planes disappeared from radar screens within minutes of each other after taking off from the same airport, Moscow's Domodedovo, Russian officials had held back from connecting them to terrorism, citing bad fuel and human error as other possible causes.
The Russian presidential envoy for the region that includes Chechnya, Vladimir Yakovlev, however, conceded Thursday that terrorism was seen as the most likely cause.
The crashes took place just five days before presidential elections were to be held in Chechnya, where rebels and Russian forces have been fighting for nearly five years. Officials had warned of concern that separatists could try to commit attacks ahead of the elections, which are to fill the post of the late Kremlin-backed Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated by a FROM PAGE 12 bomb in May.
Russian officials have repeatedly contended that the rebels who have been fighting Russian forces in Chechnya for nearly five years receive help from foreign terrorist organisations, including al-Qaida.
Friday's claim of responsibility did not refer to al-Qaida, but a group called "the Islambouli Brigades of al-Qaida" claimed responsibility for last month's attempt to assassinate Pakistan's prime minister-designate.
AFP adds: An Islamic group calling itself the Islambouli Brigades claimed responsibility for the crashes of two Russian planes that killed 90 people, hailing it as a first strike to stop Moscow's fight against separatists in Chechnya.
"The Islambouli Brigades declare that our mujahedeen (fighters) have succeeded in hijacking two Russian planes," said the group in a statement posted on a website.
It said: "The mujahedeens have succeeded despite the problems that they encountered at the beginning. They were five mujahedeens in each plane."
"Our mujahedeens succeeded in directing the first strike that will be followed by a series of operations aimed to back and assist our brothers in Chechnya and other regions suffering from Russia," it added.
"Russia's slaughtering of Muslims continues and will not stop without the start of a war that would shed blood."
The group said that it would "soon publish the wills of the mujahedeens who sacrificed their lives."
The authenticity of the statement could not immediately be confirmed. A group by the same name has claimed attacks in Pakistan earlier this month.
The use of the name Islambouli is a likely reference to Lt. Khaled al-Islambouli who took part in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Cairo in 1981.
Captors execute FROM PAGE 12 would maintain its "civil and military" presence in the oil-rich country.
But early on Thursday Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Rome was prepared to pull its soldiers out if the interim government in Baghdad requested it.
Italian sources in Iraq confirmed the Al-Jazeera report of Baldoni's death to Italy's Ansa news agency.
"These are horrifying pictures," said one Italian source who had seen the videotape. An Italian civil servant was heading for Qatar to obtain a copy of the video, Ansa said.
The agency said the video, which had been seen by Italy's ambassador to Qatar, was "brief and bloody". Baldoni had not been decapitated but shot, it said.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi reacted immediately after Baldoni's death had been confirmed.
"There are no words for an inhuman act which at one swoop wipes out centuries of civilisation and returns us to the dark times of barbarism," Berlusconi said in a message of condolences to the family of the 56-year-old journalist, who was married with two children.
The prime minister expressed his compassion and solidarity, while stressing his "firm determination to fight terrorism".
Speaking at his villa in Sardinia, Berlusconi added: "Italy will maintain its fidelity to the commitments it has made with the provisional Iraqi government in the framework of the UN deliberations to return peace and democracy to Iraq."