Two passenger jets crashed simultaneously in different places after taking off from a Moscow airport, leaving 89 people dead and raising fears of terrorism in the heart of Russia. The planes departed within about an hour of each other late Tuesday bound for destinations in southern Russia and went down at almost precisely the same moment 770 kilometers (480 miles) apart in two regions south of the Russian capital. Wreckage and bodies lay strewn across fields outside the central city of Tula and the southern city of Rostov-on-Don as hundreds of emergency workers used cranes to sift through the detritus and extract corpses. Officials were at a loss to explain how the planes went down with such improbably coincidental timing and said the possibility that the crashes resulted from terrorist attacks was being \"carefully studied\" along with other theories. There were however no claims of responsibility for the twin disasters and investigators also indicated that they were looking at other possible explanations including bad weather, pilot error and problems with the fuel pumped into the jets. \"The hypothesis of a terrorist act is being carefully studied\" by experts from the FSB intelligence service and other government agencies, FSB spokesman Sergei Ignachenko told AFP. Russian security agencies were already on heightened alert ahead of elections Sunday in the war-torn republic of Chechnya that some breakaway rebel groups have vowed to thwart with violence if needed. President Vladimir Putin, in a statement transmitted by Russian media, ordered security agencies to investigate the crashes \"without delay\" but there was little official comment on the crashes apart from death toll updates. Russian media reported that the planes were carrying a total of 90 passengers and crew. That figure however was later revised to 89 after authorities published figures indicating one plane had 46 people aboard and the other 43. (AFP)