Islamic State Claim It Brought Down Russian Airliner In Sinai Branded

In a statement on Twitter, the militants said they brought the plane down in response to Russian airstrikes that killed hundreds of Muslims on Syrian land.

The Russian aircraft’s cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder are expected to shed light on what caused Flight KGL-9268, which was travelling from Sharm el-Sheikh to the Russian city of St Petersburg on Saturday, to break up near cruising altitude. And Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said the claim that terrorists brought down the plane with an anti-aircraft missile “cannot be considered reliable”, according to RIA Novosti.

Officials have already ruled out technical problems and human error as causes, but not yet the possibility of a terrorist attack.

“The speculation that this plane was brought down by a missile is off the table”, the official said.

The latest developments after a Saturday’s crash of a Russian passenger plane in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board.

One of the members of the Egyptian committee examining the black box of the crashed aircraft told Reuters that the plane showed no indication of being stuck from outside, and the pilot did not try to contact anyone before the plane vanished from the radar.

Experts believe IS, also known as ISIS or ISIL, lack the missile capability to hit a plane at 31,000 feet, though it is possible a bomb was used on to take it down, they think.

“The plane was in excellent condition”, Smirnov said. And if that was the case, why haven’t investigators found signs of an explosive impact on the crash victims’ bodies, as Russian state media reports?

The source declined to give more details but based his comments on the preliminary examination of the black boxes recovered from the flight.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the crash as an “enormous tragedy” and expressed his condolences to the families of the victims.

Director of US National Intelligence James Clapper said on Monday (Nov 2) that he knew of no direct evidence that terrorism was to blame for the weekend crash of a Russian passenger plane in Egypt.

“It doesn’t tell us if it was a bomb… or if somebody had a fight in the airplane with a gun – there is a whole raft of things that could happen in this regard”, he said.

Russians investigators, who have had plenty of opportunities to examine commercial crashes on their own soil, cautioned the airline against a rush to judgment.

Mourners continued to come to St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport on Tuesday to lay flowers and leave paper planes and soft toys at the arrivals hall.