Investigators “90% sure” of bomb on crashed Russian plane

“Everyone is on their holidays according to their packages, and when they’re done they fly home on their regular flights, but without luggage”, Dmitry Gorin of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia told the Russian News Service.

After both London and Washington lent support to the theory that the Russian civilian flight may have been brought down by a bomb, Moscow halted all flights to Egypt, although it also cautioned that it was too soon to draw conclusions.

All 224 people aboard the Metrojet Airbus A321 were killed in the crash in the Sinai Peninsula, which took place shortly after take-off from Sharm el-Sheikh en route to St Petersburg. Emirates does not operate regular flights to Sharm al-Sheikh.

But an investigator told Reuters that they are “90% sure” it was indeed a bomb that caused the crash, which claimed the lives of 224 passengers, including 17 children.

On Saturday, the head of the investigating committee, Ayman al-Muqaddam, announced that a sound was heard in the final second of the recording. The paper said passengers were kept in the dark about the incident.

The decision to suspend flights with immediate effect came after a team of British security experts made an initial security assessment in Sharm el-Sheikh, but the government has yet to identify IS as the perpetrators.

Egyptian officials, meanwhile, have blamed the crash on a technical malfunction.

The UK Government last week suspended flights to and from Sharm because of security concerns about its airport, but insisted it still regarded the resort itself as safe.

The Islamic State militant group has claimed it brought down the plane in retribution for Russian airstrikes on Syria, without saying how it purportedly did so.

The first hard evidence of a possible bomb was revealed this weekend by Egyptian officials who said the cockpit voice recorder, the CVR, captured a distinct but undetermined noise just before it stopped working.

“When you couple that with the satellite technology, this flash of heat on the airplane, the fact that ISIS has declared war on Russia, this was a Russian plane headed for Russia, in addition to the USA and United Kingdom intelligence that we have received, I think all indicators are pointing to the fact that this was ISIS putting a bomb on an airplane”.