Russian Plane Bomb Was in Cabin, Not Luggage
ISIS claims it was able to exploit weaknesses in security at Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh airport to smuggle the bomb aboard.
Russia has spoken out on the demise of Russian Metrojet Flight 9268, which crashed into the Sinai desert last month on its way out of Egypt’s resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Egypt has not officially given a reason as to why the plane was brought down, calling on all sides to await the official results of an investigation carried out by an Egyptian-led team.
Elsewhere in the magazine, the group makes a number of references to the attacks on Paris last Friday.
An undated image made available in the Islamic State’s magazine Dabiq on November 18 claims to show the bomb that downed a Russian plane bound for St. Petersburg.
Under the photo, a caption reads: “Image of IED [improvised explosive device] used to bring down the Russian airliner”.
Putin has since offered a $50 million-reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for the bombing of Metrojet Flight 9268 that took the lives of 224 people. The magazine also displayed passports it said came from some of the dead.
Dabiq claimed the attack, which killed all 224 people onboard, was prompted by Russian airstrikes on rebels looking to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The bomb was placed in the aircraft’s main cabin not in the cargo compartment as reported earlier, the daily Kommersant reported, citing an unnamed source.
The authenticity of the images has not been verified.
China’s Foreign Ministry said the nation is “deeply shocked”.
She said Norway did not intend to pay a ransom for his release.
“Ever since the Chinese citizen was held hostage by the Islamic State group, the Chinese government has been sparing no effort in rescuing him”, ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in a statement, according to the AP.
In its latest issue, it did not give any details about how, when or where they were killed. They were both “blessed attacks” according to terrorist-writers in the propaganda magazine, which aims to recruit western Muslim men to the so-called “caliphate”, a plan to take over the world and scrub it of Christians and all other non-Islamists.
“Maybe today this grand coalition with Russian Federation is possible because it has evolved”, he said, referring to President Francois Hollande’s call to create a large coalition against the group.