MOSCOW – A top Russian official acknowledged yesterday what many citizens already suspected – that terrorism was the most likely cause of two jetliners crashing minutes apart, a feeling reflected in a newspaper headline warning that “Russia now has a Sept. 11.”

Just a day after officials stressed there were many possibilities besides terrorism, presidential envoy Vladimir Yakovlev told Russia’s ITAR-Tass news agency that the main theory “all the same remains terrorism.”

He said the planes’ flight recorders had not provided any clues to the disaster. Additionally, the transport minister, Igor Levitin, confirmed Sibir airlines’ report that its crew activated an emergency signal shortly before the plane disappeared from radar screens. Visiting the site of the crash, he said, however, that details were slim because “no verbal confirmation from the crew was received” saying what the problem was.

[A woman with a Chechen name has been fingered as the cause of one of the crashes, CBS News reported last night. Her name has not been released and it is not certain that she was a terrorist, but she allegedly wore a belt laden with explosives that would have passed through security undetected unless she was frisked. Typically in Russia, women are not.]

Officials previously said there was no indication of trouble from a Volga-Aviaexpress airliner that also crashed late Tuesday, although people on the ground reported hearing a series of explosions.

Russian press also raised questions about a possible link between the crashes and an explosion a few hours earlier at a bus stop on a road leading to Domodedovo airport, where the two doomed planes took off.

The suspicion of terrorism came after earlier warnings from officials that separatists might try to carry out attacks before an election this Sunday in Chechnya to replace the war-torn region’s assassinated pro-Kremlin president. The rebels have made attacks in Moscow and other cities, hijacked planes outside Russia and allegedly staged suicide bombings.

“I am inclined to think that it is a terrorist act, because there are too many coincidences,” said Ruben Suryaninov, an elderly retiree. “What needs to happen so that two planes going from the same airport would bang at the same moment?”

“It’s too suspicious,” agreed Natalia Kozhelupova, a physicist who was out on a national day of mourning for the 89 people killed in the crashes. Russia’s tricolor flag flew at half-staff and TV stations canceled entertainment programs.

The government had hoped the jetliners’ flight data recorders would shed some light, but Mr. Yakovlev told state run First Channel that experts found both boxes shut off before indicating any problems.

Mr. Yakovlev, the president’s envoy for southern Russia, where one of the planes crashed, said both boxes “turned off immediately” – an indication “that something happened very fast.”

The planes – a Sibir Tu-154 with 46 aboard and a Volga-Aviaexpress Tu-134 with 43 passengers – disappeared from radar almost simultaneously around 11 p.m. Tuesday. The Tu-134 was headed to the southern city of Volgograd and the other plane to the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, where President Putin had been vacationing. They had taken off about 40 minutes apart.