Russian and Egyptian officials dismissed that claim, saying the group didn’t have the weaponry to hit a plane at a high altitude.
Advertisement
“There is a very aggressive [ISIS] chapter in the Sinai, but we really don’t know, and I think once the black boxes have been analyzed, which they recovered, perhaps we’ll know more“, he said.
In Washington, the director of US national intelligence, James Clapper, said he has not been made aware of any direct evidence of terrorist involvement.
Though the airline typically ferries oil industry personnel, the plane was carrying mostly Russian tourists from the Sinai resort city of Sharm el-Shiekh to St. Petersburg when it crashed.
“The only [explanation] for the plane to have been destroyed in mid-air can be specific impact, purely mechanical, physical influence on the aircraft”, Alexander Smirnov said. “We (are) excluding technical problems and rejecting human error”, Alexander Smirnov, deputy director for Metrojet, said in Moscow.
Egyptian aviation officials say the pilot had reported technical difficulties and was planning to land the Airbus A321-200 at the nearest airport before losing contact with air traffic controllers.
The plane was “flying out of control – that is it wasn’t flying, it was falling”, he said.
Kogalymavia operated the Metrojet flight.
Russian officials first said Sunday that it appeared the plane had broken up in midair – fueling speculation of a possible plot involving explosives – and officials on Monday did little to dispel those fears.
President Vladimir Putin described the crash, Russia’s worst air disaster, as a “huge tragedy”.
Yet a source in the Egyptian investigation committee said that the plane was not struck from the outside, Reuters reports.
According to a senior manager of the company, the crash resulted from a major damage caused to the airplane’s frame in flight.
GWEN IFILL: But getting an objective description from Russian or Egyptian officials has proved hard in previous crashes.
“The process of identification has begun”.
More than 2,000 people gathered on St. Petersburg’s main square to mourn the victims.
Those on board heading to St. Petersburg included 3 Ukrainians and 221 Russians. One, someone on board had a bomb big enough to blow the plane apart, which would be somewhat puzzling considering that this was a charter for a tour group returning to Russian Federation.
Advertisement
“For instance it claimed that the recent prison raid by Kurdish and USA special forces were a total failure, when in fact video evidence surfaced showed them freeing the hostages”, he said.
