A USA infrared satellite reportedly detected a heat flash at the time of the air incident on Saturday, with a senior Pentagon official telling NBC News that the intelligence community in Washington believes that a surface-to-air attack was not responsible.
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As the investigation into the crash of a Russian passenger jet over Egypt continues, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi said that any claims that the Islamic State group shot it down were “propaganda”.
“We rule out technical faultiness of the plane, we exclude a mistake by the pilot or the crew, the so-called human factor”, he said.
Mokhtar Awad, an analyst with the Center for American Progress told the Guardian a local ISIS affiliate, Wilayat Sinai, may have hastily claimed responsibility for the crash without providing any evidence to back it up.
Investigators were set to begin examining the plane’s black box flight recorders.
The group’s director general, Alexander Snagovsky, said: “The only reasonable explanation is that it was [due to] external activity”.
A Russian Airbus-321 aircraft with 224 people aboard crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on October 31.
Air France, Lufthansa and Emirates have also announced that they will avoid flying over the Sinai Peninsula until the causes of the disaster are clarified.
And U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told a “Defense One” conference Monday that there was not yet any “direct evidence of terrorist involvement” in the crash.
In an interview with the BBC released Tuesday, el-Sissi also reiterated his assertion that the cause of the crash may not be known for months and that until then, the causes should not be speculated on.
The first bodies recovered from the wreckage arrived home at St Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport greeted by piles of flowers left by a grieving public.
Additionally, 140 bodies and more than 100 body parts were transported by two planes to St. Petersburg, with a third to follow Tuesday night.
However, Alexander Neradko, head of Russia’s aviation authority, criticised the airline’s comments, saying they were “premature and not based on any real facts”.
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Representatives from at least five countries have joined the investigation of the Airbus jetliner crash.
