RUSSIAN POOL
1. Various President Vladimir Putin in meeting Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov and the head of Russia's Federal Security Service, Nikolai Patrushev
RUSSIAN POOL
2. Putin enters meeting and sits
3. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Vladimir Putin, Russian President:
"We should gather together all our forces - without that, we won't be able to find a solution. Unfortunately, we suffered a tragic event today with the loss of a civil plane. We aren't excluding the possibility that it was a terrorist attack. I would also like also to say a few words about the planned conference."
APTN
4. Main operating room of Ministry of Emergency Situations
5. Mid shot operating room
6. Mid shot people at computer
7. Close-up of computer screen showing the Black Sea coast
8. Set up of Musalyov
9. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Sergei Musalyov, Senior Duty Officer, Main Control Room, Ministry of Emergency Situations
"A boat, the 'Captain Vakulov', arrived at the disaster site. Two ministry helicopters have already left the site to rebase in Sochi. We now have lists of passengers on the plane from the Israeli embassy. There were 64 adult passengers and two children on board, a total of 66 people."
10. Wide shot Sibir airline offices
11. Mid shot window
12. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Sergei Grachev, Marketing Manager, Sibir Airlines in Moscow
"A commission has been organised, a hotline has been set up for relatives and friends in Novosibirsk. The entire company of Sibir is very upset over this event and and is doing all it can at this time."
13. Wide shot office interiors
14. Mid shot plane model
Russia was on full alert on Thursday, with fear spreading that an explosion that downed a chartered airliner heading from Tel Aviv to Siberia, with 77 people on board, might have been the result of terrorist action.
"A civilian aircraft crashed today and it is possible that it is the result of a terrorist act," Putin told a meeting of visiting European justice ministers in Moscow on Thursday.
Deputy Transport Minister Karl Ruppel said a crew of an Armenian An-24 airliner in the area had informed Russian air traffic controllers in Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia that they saw an explosion aboard a plane flying nearby.
Ruppel couldn't immediately say what the cause of the explosion was but confirmed Russian media reports that a blast had occurred on the Russian plane.
The Armenian plane was flying on a regularly scheduled flight over the Black Sea from the Ukrainian Crimean city of Simferopol to the Armenian capital Yerevan.
However, reports from the U-S suggested that the plane might have been hit accidentally by a Ukrainian surface to air missile, after it emerged that the Ukrainian military was carrying out live fire exercises in the area.
The plane, a Tupolev 154, went down in pieces 180 kilometres (114 miles) off the Russian coastal city of Adler, on the Georgian border, said a spokesman for the Ministry of Emergency Situations.
The plane was on its way from Israel to the Siberian city of Novosibirsk.
It belonged to Sibir Airlines, which is based in Novosibirsk, about 2-thousand-800 kilometres (1,750 miles) east of Moscow, and had been chartered, Sibir officials said.
The Emergency Situations Ministry said there were at least 66 passengers and 11 crew members on board.
All the passengers were Israelis, said Sergei Moslayov, a duty officer at the ministry, though it has since been reported that some were Russians.
The deputy director for security for Sibir airlines, Viktor Alexeyev, was on board the plane, state-controlled O-R-T television reported.
Nikolai Patrushev, the head of Russia's Federal Security Service, told Putin in a televised meeting that Russian officials had first learned of the crash from Armenian officials.
He said planes and ships had been sent to the area of the crash within 15 minutes.
The Emergency Situations Ministry said one body had been recovered so far, as well as some fragments of the plane.
