Russian plane crash: Bomb brought down Metrojet flight in Sinai in ‘act of terror’, killing 224
THE Kremlin has confirmed that a bomb on board the Metrojet plane caused it to explode over the Sinai desert, as Egypt arrested two suspected accomplices.
THE Metrojet Airbus 321-200 that exploded 23 minutes after take off over the Sinai Peninsula on October 31 was brought down by a bomb, Russia has admitted.
Although the Kremlin initially rejected the idea, the head of Russia’s FSB security service told President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday it was now clear the explosion was caused by a homemade explosive device on board the plane.
A $50 million reward has been offered for information leading to the arrest of those responsible.
Egyptian authorities have taken two employees of Sharm el-Sheikh Airport into custody with suspicions they had assisted in the planting on the device on the plane.
The Islamic State group had already claimed responsibility for the attack, and Putin vowed to hunt down those who carried it out. Russian war planes struck Raqqa, the self-declared IS capital in Syria, and other targets on Tuesday, the defence minister told Putin at a briefing later in the day.
The FSB appealed to the “Russian and international communities for co-operation in identifying the terrorists.” It specified that the reward would be paid in dollars.
“According to our experts, a homemade explosive device equivalent to 1 kilogram of TNT went off on-board, which caused the plane to break up in the air, which explains why the fuselage was scattered over such a large territory. I can certainly say that this was a terrorist act,” FSB head Alexander Bortnikov said.
He said tests showed the explosives had been produced outside of Russia, but gave no further details.
All 224 people on board, most of them Russian tourists, were killed when the Metrojet Airbus 321-200 crashed over the Sinai Peninsula on October 31, about 23 minutes after taking off from the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh. The plane was headed to St. Petersburg, where most of the passengers were from.
In Cairo, there was no immediate comment on the news from the Egyptian government. State-owned television carried the news from Moscow, but had no official comment either.
Egypt had resisted British and US assertions that an explosive device was the likely cause of the Russian plane’s crash. Later, government officials and the pro-government media shifted their focus away from the cause of the crash to speculating on what they called a Western conspiracy against Egypt and the crushing impact of the crash on the country’s vital tourism industry.
Mr Putin said Russia would be relentless in hunting down those responsible for the attack.
“There’s no statute of limitations for this. We need to know all of their names,” Mr Putin said. “We’re going to look for them everywhere wherever they are hiding. We will find them in any place on Earth and punish them.”
The Islamic State group had claimed responsibility in written statements, as well as video and audio messages posted on the internet following the crash. It said the attack was retaliation for Russia’s air campaign against IS and other groups in Syria, where Moscow wants to preserve the rule of President Bashar Assad.
One of the US defence officials said the Russians gave prior notification of their attacks on Raqqa by communicating with the US-led coalition’s air operations centre at al-Udeid air base in Qatar. The official said this was in accordance with protocols worked out by US and Russian officials in October.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss non-US military operations, provided no details on targets or the scale or outcome of the attacks.
Mr Putin said Russia’s air campaign in Syria “should not only be continued but should be intensified so that the criminals realise that retribution is inevitable.”
He instructed the Defence Ministry and General Staff to present their suggestions on how Russia’s operation in Syria could be modified.
Mr Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the president’s order didn’t mean that Russia was considering sending ground troops to Syria.
Mr Putin’s meeting with Mr Bortnikov and other senior officials was held late at night, shortly after the president returned from meetings with other world leaders in Turkey. The leaders from the Group of 20 rich and developing nations had vowed to work together to combat the Islamic State group.
“In this work, including the search to find and punish the criminals, we are relying on all of our friends,” Mr Putin said. “We will act in accordance with the UN Charter’s Article 51, which gives each country the right to self-defence. Everyone who tries to aid the criminals should understand that they will be responsible for giving them shelter.”
Mr Putin was unusually sombre. After Mr Bortnikov pronounced it a terrorist act, Mr Putin asked the other officials around the table to stand for a moment of silence.
IS has warned Mr Putin that it would also target him “at home,” but did not offer any details to back its claim.
While releasing specifics would add credibility, the group may be withholding because its claim is false, because doing so would undermine plans for similar attacks in the future, or because the aura of mystery might deepen its mystique among diehard followers.
IS has also claimed responsibility for Friday attacks in Paris that killed 129 people and wounded 350 others.
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