The bodies of 144 victims of the Kogalymavia Airbus A321 that crashed on the Sinai Peninsula were delivered to St. Petersburg. It was not shot down by a missile, according to a source in the committee analyzing the flight recorders.
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Only an external impact could have caused a Russian plane to dive into the Egyptian desert, killing all 224 people on board, Metrojet airline officials have said.
Alexander Neradko, head of Russia’s aviation authority, criticised the airline’s comments ruling out technical fault or human error, saying they were “premature and not based on any real facts”.
“We don’t have any direct evidence of any terrorist involvement yet”, he said. “But I wouldn’t rule it out”.
ISIS has a “very aggressive chapter in the Sinai”, Clapper added, referring to the Egyptian peninsula where Kogalymavia Flight 9268 broke into pieces before hitting the ground.
Investigators say “uncharacteristic” sounds could be heard from recordings of crew and dispatcher conversations moments before the aircraft exploded.
All 224 people on board died in the crash over the weekend. It is possible, however, that the heat flash had nothing to do with the plane, and was simply in the vicinity, the outlet reported.
“ISIL has claimed responsibility”, Clapper said, using an alternate acronym for IS, “but we really don’t know” if it is involved.
Mourners continued to come to St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport on Tuesday to lay flowers and leave paper planes and soft toys at the arrivals hall.
Of those, 209 were Russian, four were from Ukraine and one passenger was from neighboring Belarus. He did not identify the victims but said they were from the St. Petersburg suburbs and a neighbouring region.
The cause of Saturday’s plane crash, the deadliest in Russian history, is still a mystery.
Russian Federation has been plunged into mourning since the tragedy. A second government plane was set to leave Cairo on Monday.
Speaking in a TV interview, Cameron, who had earlier spoken with Russian president Vladimir Putin, said: “If anything changes, we don’t sit around and chew our pens and not act”.
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The group’s director general, Alexander Snagovsky, said: “The only reasonable explanation is that it was [due to] external activity”.
