Military blamed for Ukraine crash

Both pilots are being investigated

LVIV, Ukraine -- The inquiry into the world's worst air show disaster is focusing on negligence, Ukraine's top prosecutor has said.

Prosecutor-General Svyatoslav Pyskun said pilot error and poor planning were probably to blame for the disaster in which 83 people died on Saturday.

Ukraine's air force commander and a top officer have been detained, the plane's two pilots are under investigation and the acting defence minister Petro Shulyak has submitted his resignation.

Pyskun said on Monday that both pilots of the Russian-made Sukhoi Su-27 had been given a "wrong task" by their bosses, who had not taken into consideration necessary safety precautions.

"As of now we may surely say that it was military negligence," Pyskun told reporters in the capital Kiev.

CNN NewsPass VIDEO CNN's Jill Dougherty reports Ukrainian authorities are citing military negligence in allowing spectators in the path of a jet that crashed and killed 83 (July 29) Play video   MORE STORIES • Safety rules have tightened  • Eyewitness: Crash horror    EXTRA INFORMATION Gallery: Images of the crash  • Facts: The Sukhoi Su-27  • Timeline: Air show crashes

"Also there were signs of criminal actions by pilots. They used this vehicle incorrectly."

Pyskun spoke as hundreds of Ukrainians made a tearful visit to the scene of the crash on what has been declared a day of mourning. (Story)

Flags fluttered at half-mast and black ribbons adorned buildings across the country as prayers were said for the families of those who perished in the crash, in the western city of Lviv.

In the aftermath of the crash, Ukraine's former air force commander, Volodymyr Strelnykov, who was fired on Saturday, and other top military officials have been arrested.

Officials said Strelnykov was detained after an investigation found that there were "serious errors in organising, preparing and conducting flights, in particular organising demonstration flights in Lviv," the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported.

Pyskun said the Su-27 had been flying too low before the crash and that organisers should not have allowed stunts to be performed directly over spectators.

The jet had been performing an elaborate manoeuvre at low altitude when it clipped the ground, sliced off the nose of a plane sitting on the tarmac and roared through a crowd of hundreds of spectators before exploding in a ball of fire.

Aviation experts said spectators at the show should not have been allowed to sit or stand in any of the plane's flight paths.

The Lviv crash is the world's worst air show disaster, eclipsing the 70 killed in 1988 when three Italian jets collided, sending one into a crowd at the U.S. Air Force base in Ramstein, Germany. (More crashes)

An unidenfified woman, who lost relatives in the crash, mourns over a child's coffin during a funeral near Lviv on Monday

Evhem Marchuk, secretary of Ukraine's defence and security council and head of the state commission into the accident, told Reuters that investigators were analysing the flight recorder retrieved from the twin-engined fighter.

The air show had been marking the 60th anniversary of a local unit of the Ukrainian Air Force.

The Su-27 amazed audiences at its first appearances at Western air shows in the 1990s with aerobatic manoeuvres previously unknown for a twin-engined jet aircraft of its size. (More)

The reputation of Ukraine's armed forces, cash-strapped since the Soviet Union's collapse a decade ago, was blackened last October when a missile fired during a training exercise hit a Russian airliner, killing all 78 people aboard.

Just a day after Saturday's incident, a second Russian aircraft, an Ilyushin Il-86, crashed on take-off from Moscow's biggest airport, killing at least 14 people. (Full story)