Russia says does not rule out "terrorist act" in Black Sea jet crash

People place flowers to commemorate passengers and crew members of Russian military plane, which crashed into the Black Sea on its way to Syria on Sunday, at the Russian embassy in Minsk, Belarus December 26, 2016. REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian authorities said on Thursday they had not ruled out that a "terrorist act" could have caused the crash of a military plane into the Black Sea on Sunday, but said it was only one of the theories under consideration. "The was no explosion on board," said Sergei Bainetov, the Russian Air Force's head of flight safety who heads a government commission investigating the crash, which killed 92 people. "But this isn't the only type of terrorist act ... It could have been any type of mechanical impact, so we don't rule out a terrorist act," Bainetov said. (Reporting by Gleb Stolyarov; Writing by Peter Hobson; Editing by Katya Golubkova)