Security at the airport, and others around Egypt, have become a central concern as investigators probe the October 31 crash of a Russian plane 23 minutes after it left Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all 224 on board.
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“The possibility of an act of terror is of course there as the reason for what happened”, he said in an interview to Rossiyskaya Gazeta state newspaper, parts of which were published Monday evening.
Airport security around the world will have to be overhauled if it is confirmed the Russian airliner crash in the Sinai was caused by an Islamic State bomb, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has warned.
After initially signalling normal air traffic would proceed, Russia late last week suspended passenger flights to Egypt. Over the weekend, Russia mounted an airlift to repatriate thousands of Russian vacationers who had been stranded in Sinai after regular flights were cancelled.
A retired senior official from Egypt’s Tourism Ministry, Magdy Salim, said airport guards regularly skip security checks for friends and co-workers and often don’t search people “out of respect to save their time if they look chic or if they come out of a fancy vehicle”. The plane delivered luggage of tourists from the Egyptian resort of Sharm-El-Sheikh.
Russian Federation will need two more weeks to bring the remaining tourists back home, he told Medvedev at the meeting.
Moreover, British Airways will soon announce the closure of Gatwick-Sharm el-Sheikh resort route. “We are 90 percent sure it was a bomb”. Egypt “expected that the information available would be communicated to us instead of being broadcast” in the media, he said. “They were clearly celebrating”, it quoted USA officials as saying.
Clark said he had ordered a security review but was not suspending any flights as a result of the disaster.
“The spread of terrorism, which we have for a long time called on our partners to tackle more seriously, did not get through to numerous parties which are now exposed and which are currently working for the interests of their citizens to face this danger”, he told a news conference.
“With a limited number of flights able to leave Sharm el-Sheikh each day for the United Kingdom, it is likely that tour operators or airlines will advise a few people to extend their stay at their resort”, a government spokesman said.
He said: “It could be lithium batteries with one of the passengers, it could be an explosion in the fuel compartment – all the scenarios are on the table, I cannot exclude anything”.
Planes were sent to the country to retrieve Russian tourists.
Referring to media reports that Western intelligence sources believe that the plane may have been brought down by a bomb, Muqaddam said no evidence related to those claims had been provided to his team. “The committee urged the sources of such reports to provide it with all information that could help us to undertake our mission”.
The TV station France 2 reported Friday that European investigators who analyzed the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from Flight 9268 are saying the crash is not an accident.
Evidence is mounting to suggest the Russian plane was brought down by a bomb.
Egyptian airport and security officials told The Associated Press on Saturday that authorities were questioning airport staff and ground crew who worked on the plane and had placed a few employees under surveillance.
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There have been reports that security agencies received intelligence based on intercepted communications between Sinai militants which pointed towards a bomb on the plane.
