Russia mourns military deaths in copter crash

MOSCOW -- Flags flew at half-staff across Russia Thursday as the country mourned 116 people killed when a packed helicopter crashed in Chechnya. President Vladimir Putin blamed the military for ignoring an order not to use the craft to transport troops.

The giant Mi-26 helicopter went down Monday in a minefield outside the Khankala military headquarters near Chechnya's capital, Grozny. The latest victim died overnight.

Investigators said they found part of a mobile missile launcher near the wreckage, lending credence to rebel claims they shot down the aircraft. However, prosecutors also are considering technical malfunctions and overloading as causes.

"Today we are more inclined to think it was a missile, and maybe not just one," Gennady Troshev, commander of Russian forces in the region, said on ORT television Thursday.

Putin called Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov to the Kremlin for an accounting of the investigation.

Banned transport

"Even the most preliminary analysis shows that as a rule the responsibility lies with officials' improper performance of their duties," he said during a 10-minute piece of the conversation broadcast on state television.

"How could this happen, in spite of the Defense Ministry decree prohibiting the transport of people on this kind of aircraft?" a grim-faced Putin asked Ivanov, his close political ally and former KGB associate.

Putin said a decree banning the use of Mi-26 helicopters as troop transports was on the books since 1997.

A Defense Ministry official who would not give his name confirmed the order was issued but said he did not know why. He said it stipulated that only servicemen accompanying cargo could ride on the Mi-26.

Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said the order might have been aimed at stopping officers in the cash-strapped military from taking money to ferry people on the helicopters, which he said are used primarily for cargo and heavy lifting.

Nikolai Kormiltsev, the deputy commander of Russia's ground troops, said the craft was not overloaded, carrying only half its maximum payload of 22 tons.

Putin also said the military reform he has launched -- over the objections of most top brass -- was "aimed at making the army more viable and effective, so that such tragedies would not occur."

Only 31 of the 147 people on board the helicopter survived the fiery crash, and hospital officials said Thursday several were in grave condition.

ORT television repeatedly broadcast a list of known victims against a background of clouds moving across a blue sky. Participants in a small march in Moscow to mark Flag Day, the anniversary of the failed 1991 coup against then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, tied black ribbons to the Russian flags they carried.

"For us it's a tragedy, and in general the war in Chechnya is a tragedy for all of us," said Tatyana Veretennikova, 64, a retired chemist participating in the march.

Another serviceman died overnight, bringing the death toll to 116, Interfax and the ITAR-Tass news agency reported, citing officials at the military hospital in Rostov-on-Don. Seventy-three bodies were brought to the military forensic laboratory in Rostov but only 11 have been identified, laboratory chief Vladimir Shcherbakov said.

Military officials appealed to victims' relatives to help identify the bodies, most of which were badly burned. Most victims died in a blaze that erupted while the helicopter was still airborne, Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky said.