Women suspected of being airliner bombers

THEY lived in the same apartment in Chechnya, worked in the same market and, possibly, died within moments of each other on separate airliners that crashed in Russia last week.

New details emerged yesterday about the two Chechen women who are the focus of suspicions that the planes were blown up by terrorists. However, questions also arose.

Russian investigators continued piecing together information about the Tuesday crashes that killed a total of 90 people. General Andrei Fetisov, chief of the scientific department at the Federal Security Service, said investigators are certain there were explosions on both planes and reiterated that traces of the high explosive hexogen were found in the wreckage.

How the explosive may have been brought on board the planes that took off from Moscow is still unclear, and investigators were scraping for clues about Amanta Nagayeva and Satsita Dzhebirkhanova, two Chechen women whose names were listed on tickets for the flights. The crashes took place just five days before presidential elections in Chechnya.