LONDON // UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said that a bomb may have brought down the Russian plane that crashed in Egypt on Saturday.
The statement is the strongest indicator yet that terrorists may have been responsible for the crash of the Metrojet Airbus Group SE A321, which was carrying 224 people. So far there have not been any findings released by investigators suggesting what caused the plane to break into pieces and fall to the ground.
“As more information has come to light we have become concerned that the plane may well have been brought down by an explosive device.”
Mr Cameron’s office said on Wednesday.
Britain temporarily suspended flights from Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh, from where the doomed plane took off.
Egypt said on Wednesday that the Airbus’s cockpit-voice recorder was damaged in the crash and that work is required to access its final few minutes.
Revised data covering the Metrojet’s final moments show that it slowed suddenly and then plunged to the Earth at 483 kilometres per hour, according to flight-tracking website FlightRadar24. The plane fell from 31,000 feet to 26,000 feet in the final 26 seconds, according to the final transmissions from its radio transponder.
The new data is consistent with reports from Egyptian and Russian officials, who said that the plane came apart as it was flying at cruising altitude from Sharm El Sheikh to St Petersburg.
In a new statement on Wednesday, ISIL for a second time insisted it had brought down the plane.
An ISIL affiliate in Egypt is conducting a bloody insurgency in the north of the Sinai Peninsula that has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers.
On Wednesday, it claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing on a police social club in El Arish that killed four policemen.
Mr El Sisi, who left for London on Wednesday, has downplayed the ISIL claim as “propaganda” but said a full investigation will take time.
*Bloomberg and Agence France-Presse
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3Novices Europe
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