Vladimir Putin slaps £30MILLION bounty on heads of ISIS Russian plane bombers

A bomb that downed a Russian plane in Egypt last month had been placed in the aircraft’s main cabin not in the cargo compartment as reported earlier, the daily Kommersant said on Wednesday citing an unnamed source.

The picture showed a yellow can of Schweppes Gold, a flavored soda marketed in Egypt, and what appeared to be other bomb components made of plastic and metal. Civil Aviation Minister Hossam Kamal said that the Egyptian investigating committee has not yet found any proof that a “criminal act” was behind the crash.

Egypt’s interior minister told a news conference in Sharm al-Sheikh on Tuesday that there was “no information” about security lapses at the airport.

Islamic State said it had exploited a loophole at Sharm Al Sheikh airport, where the Airbus 321 originated, in order to smuggle a bomb on board.

Egyptian authorities opened an investigation into a possible security breach or infiltration by militants of the Sharm el-Sheikh airport staff, security officials said.

Putin, wearing a dark suit, presided over a minute of silence in memory of the victims at the Kremlin meeting, before telling security and military chiefs the incident was one of the bloodiest crimes in modern Russian history and ordering the air force to intensify its air strikes in Syria in response. It said it initially planned to bring down a plane from one of the countries participating in the U.S.-led coalition that has been striking it in Syria and Iraq. “That their daily killing of dozens in (Syria) through their air strikes will only bring them calamities”.

Moscow’s confirmation of the attack – the deadliest against a Russian target since the Beslan school massacre by Islamist rebels from the North Caucasus in 2004 – comes days after a chain of attacks claimed by the Islamic State group killed at least 132 people in Paris.

“We will find them anywhere on the planet and punish them”, Putin said of the plane bombers at a somber Kremlin meeting. But the Russian attacks that followed on parts of Syria held by the Islamic State, presented in such detail at a live television briefing, left no doubt that the Russians were now intent on showing that they blamed the group. Sharm el-Sheikh was particularly popular with Russian tourists, who in 2014 accounted for almost a third of the almost 10 million visitors to Egypt.

France has also increased its bombing efforts after the Paris attacks.

Putin did not expressly blame ISIS for the attack on the passenger jet, but pledged to ramp up air strikes in Syria, “so that the criminals understand that vengeance is inevitable”.