New evidences now suggests that a bomb planted by the Islamic State militant group is the likely cause of last weekend’s crash of a Russian airliner over Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, US and European security sources said on Wednesday.
Islamic State, which controls swathes of Iraq and Syria and is battling the Egyptian army in the Sinai Peninsula, said again on Wednesday it brought down the airplane, adding it would eventually tell the world how it carried out the attack.
The Airbus A321M crashed on Saturday in the Sinai Peninsula shortly after taking off from the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on its way to the Russian city of St Petersburg, killing all 224 people on board.
The US and European security sources stressed they had reached no final conclusions about the crash.
Britain probed security at Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh airport on Thursday and scrambled to repatriate thousands of tourists as Cairo and Moscow dismissed fears a Russian plane was downed by a bomb.
Hours after Britain announced it was suspending flights in and out of the Red Sea resort, where most tourists are British or Russia, Germany’s Lufthansa followed suit, citing “the current situation on the Sinai peninsula” as fears grew over airline safety.
And several European governments said they were also reviewing the situation.
British Prime Minister David Cameron held an emergency cabinet meeting on the repatriations and spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin to explain the decision before talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at Downing Street.
Citing intelligence, Cameron said it was “more likely than not that it was a terrorist bomb” that had caused a Russian passenger jet to crash in the Sinai Peninsula on Saturday.
“There are a relatively simple and straightforward set of things that need to happen at Sharm el-Sheikh airport to give us greater certainty of safety,” he added.
Washington also believes a bomb may have caused the crash, but Cairo and Moscow contradicted that assessment.
Egypt’s civil aviation minister Hossam Kamal said investigators “have as yet no evidence or data confirming the theory” of a bomb attack.
And the Kremlin dismissed the idea as “speculation.”
“The reasons for what happened can only be put forward by the investigation,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
“Any other proposed explanations seem like unverified information or some sort of speculation.”
Britain said it was working with airlines and Egyptian authorities to put in place additional security and screening measures to allow Britons in Sharm el-Sheikh to get home, but that would take time and there would be no flights returning from the resort on Thursday.
‘Something stowed’ on board
A Russian aviation official said the investigation was looking into the possibility of an object stowed on board causing the disaster.
“There are two versions now under consideration: something stowed inside (the plane) and a technical fault. But the airplane could not just break apart in the air - there should be some action. A rocket is unlikely as there are no signs of that,” the Russian official said.
Security experts and investigators have said the plane is unlikely to have been struck from the outside and Sinai-based militants are not believed to possess the technology to shoot down a jet from a cruising altitude above 30,000 feet.
Revenge for Russian airstrikes?
Islamic State group has said it had brought down the airliner “in response to Russian air strikes that killed hundreds of Muslims on Syrian land.”
In an audio message posted on a Twitter account used by the group, Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate insisted on Wednesday it was behind the crash. The claim could not immediately be authenticated.
“We, with God’s grace, are the ones who brought it down, and we are not obliged to disclose the mechanism of its demise,” the speaker said.
Russia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, launched air raids against opposition groups in Syria including Islamic State on September 30. The hardline group has called for war against both Russia and the United States in response to their air strikes in Syria.
