British attempts to return tourists from Egypt thrown into chaos

Egypt’s civil aviation ministry denied it was blocking any flights but said the numbers were limited by airport capacity.

But the revelation led PM David Cameron to say it was “more likely than not” that a bomb brought the plane down on Saturday killing 224 people.

But the intelligence isn’t definitive, Obama said in an interview Thursday with Seattle radio station KIRO.

Sinai Province, a militant Egyptian group affiliated with the IS, claimed responsibility for Saturday’s downing of the Russian plane through a statement.

Russians have been bombing Islamic State targets in Syria since end of September.

Egypt – which stands to lose millions of dollars from its vital tourism industry – maintains there is nothing wrong with the airport facility at Sharm el-Sheikh, which each year welcomes thousands of vacationers to the resort beside the crystal-clear Red Sea. “And Egypt’s foreign minister Sameh Shoukry said he was “surprised” by the UK’s “somewhat premature” decision to suspend flights”.

British holidaymakers have told how they have been offered the chance to pay up to £20 to skip queues and bag checks at Sharm el-Sheikh airport. Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said earlier Friday that “most of the people who were expecting to be home by tonight will be home by tonight”. With each flight carrying around 200 passengers, it was expected that a significant proportion of the 20,000 Britons believed to be at the beach resort would be able to return.

Egypt’s civil aviation minister, Hossam Kamal, said investigators had no evidence so far to support the explosion theory. Rescue teams have retrieved 140 bodies and more than 100 body parts while combing a 40-sq.-km (15.4-sq.-mile) area.

The Kremlin said Putin told Cameron it was necessary to rely on data yielded by the official crash investigation. But Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for the USA military’s Operation Inherent Resolve targeting ISIS in Syria and Iraq, said on Wednesday that a few Russian airstrikes – approximately one in 10 – were hitting ISIS targets.

“One cannot rule out a single theory, but at this point there are no reasons to voice just one theory as reliable – only investigators can do that”, Peskov told reporters in Moscow.

He said the investigation is likely to take several months. The company has ruled out a pilot error or a technical fault as a possible cause, drawing criticism from Russian officials for speaking with such certainty too soon.

It was the “specificity” in the chatter surrounding the crash that drew the attention of the US intelligence community, a USA official told CNN. The infrared activity could mean many things, including a bomb blast or a plane’s engine exploding due to a malfunction.

Another USA official briefed on the Metrojet crash told the AP that intercepted communications played a role in the tentative conclusion that the Islamic State group’s Sinai affiliate had planted an explosive on the flight.

Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom has shared intelligence about a possible bomb with Egyptian authorities, Egyptian officials said.

In an unusual decision, Dutch carrier KLM said it has instructed its passengers leaving from the Egyptian capital of Cairo that they can only take hand luggage on the plane departing Friday.

Tampered: Was a bomb placed in the hold?

British and Irish officials had announced Wednesday that flights from Sharm el-Sheikh to their countries would be suspended because of concerns about security.

Monarch said all of its five planned flights from the resort would leave on Friday.

– Egyptian officials have maintained that the Sharm el-Sheikh airport measures up to worldwide standards, but concerns have been raised about security there in the past.

At the airport, travelers lined up as usual for metal detectors, searches of luggage and X-rayed baggage. His statement to journalists contradicts an assertion by easyJet that it could not pick up passengers from the airport because Egyptian authorities had banned British flights from landing there. Emma Smyth said there was at least one confrontation between staff at the Aqua Blue hotel and a distraught English family that didn’t want to pay for its extra days of lodging.