Islamic State bomb may have downed Russian airliner, US officials say
After UK said concerned Metrojet was downed by explosives, investigators checking possible jihadist plot
The Russian jet that crashed in Egypt this weekend may have been taken down by an Islamic State bomb, US officials told CNN and NBC on Wednesday.
“There is a definite feeling it was an explosive device planted in luggage or somewhere on the plane,” an American official told CNN. US investigators believed Islamic State terrorists or sympathizers may have been behind the attack, NBC reported.
Both news outlets quoted unnamed American officials in their reports. There has been no official remarks connecting the Islamic State and the Russian airliner.
Earlier on Wednesday an IS-affiliated group claimed responsibility for the crash that killed over 200 passengers and crew aboard.
Intelligence investigation of the passenger manifest of Metrojet Flight 9268 yielded no red flags, NBC quoted the US official saying.
The Metrojet Airbus A321-200 carrying Russian vacationers from Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt back to Russia’s second-largest city of St. Petersburg crashed over the Sinai Peninsula early Saturday, killing all 224 people on board.
Russian officials say the plane broke up in the air 23 minutes after takeoff after reaching an altitude of 31,000 feet. But they have refrained from announcing the cause of the crash, citing the ongoing investigation.
Another American official told CNN that intel potentially connecting the Islamic State jihadist group to the attack was based partly on monitoring its member’s communications, not just the announcement.
Just hours beforehand, the British government said it was increasingly concerned that the Russian jet that crashed in Egypt was brought down by a bomb, announcing that it is suspending flights to and from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said British aviation experts were traveling to the Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, where the flight that Saturday originated from, to assess security before British flights there will be allowed to leave.
No British flights were flying there Wednesday.
“We have become concerned that the plane may well have been brought down by an explosive device,” Cameron’s office said in a statement.
The British government’s crisis committee was due to meet later Wednesday.
The announcement comes as Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi is set to visit London. Sissi, who is battling an insurgency by jihadists in the northern Sinai, has sought to downplay fears the plane was downed by a missile or bomb.
The deputy head of Sharm el-Sheikh airport said Britain’s conclusion that the plane may have been brought down by a bomb came “too soon” and may have been aimed at damaging the country’s vital tourism sector.
“Other countries might soon follow them. They want to hurt tourism and cause confusion,” Ramsey told the AP. He suggested that ulterior political and commercial motives may be behind the British statement.
Cameron and Sissi spoke by telephone on Tuesday, discussing the Russian plane crash in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula at the weekend, Cameron’s office said.
Their talks on Thursday will focus on “security cooperation between both countries,” a spokeswoman said.
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Russia and Egypt have rejected the claim.
On Wednesday, an IS affiliate in the Sinai allegedly reiterated its claim to have downed the plane.
In an audio recording circulated among militant supporters online Wednesday, a speaker said the crash coincided with the anniversary of the group’s pledge of allegiance to IS. The dates of the crash and the pledge roughly coincide according to the Islamic calendar.
Experts say the militants lack the sophisticated arms needed to shoot down a plane at cruising altitude. The speaker did not say how the militants brought down the jet.
The AP could not independently verify the recording but it resembled previous statements issued by the group. The US-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi websites, picked up the recording and circulated a translation.
Sissi said an earlier IS claim was “propaganda” aimed at damaging Egypt’s image.
Metrojet, the plane’s owner, and Russian authorities offered conflicting theories of what happened. Metrojet officials have insisted the crash was due to an “external impact,” not a technical malfunction or pilot error. Russian officials have said it’s too early to jump to that conclusion.
Two US officials told The Associated Press on Tuesday that US satellite imagery detected heat around the jet just before it went down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8-5lo191p8
The infrared activity could mean many things, however, including a bomb blast or an engine on the plane exploding due to a malfunction. One of the officials who spoke condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the information publicly said a missile striking the Metrojet was ruled out, because neither a missile launch nor an engine burn had been detected.
Some aviation experts had earlier suggested a bomb was the most likely cause of Saturday’s crash, while some others pointed to a 2001 incident in which the Metrojet plane damaged its tail during a rough landing.
Investigators have extracted the data from one black box of the Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt and experts will now analyse it, the civil aviation minister said Wednesday.
“The data from the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) has been extracted and validated. It will now be subject to detailed analysis by the investigators,” Mohamed Hossam Kamal said.
“The other black box — the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) — has been partially damaged and a lot of work is required in order to extract the data from it,” he said, without elaborating.
Experts began examining the black boxes on Tuesday, and say their investigation could last several weeks or even months.
