Rescue workers have found 12 large pieces of the plane’s hull at the crash site, indicating how badly it was damaged in the incident, Russian officials reported. This official said missiles able to shoot down an airplane at high altitude are owned by “state-actors”.
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Under worldwide aviation rules, airlines are not directly accredited to crash investigations and are discouraged from commenting on probes while they are still active.
However, Egyptian authorities have rubbished this as “propaganda”.
Egyptian investigators aided by Russian and French experts are examining the black boxes.
Unusual sounds were heard coming from the cockpit of the Metrojet flight that crashed in Egypt’s Sinai region on Saturday, according to a Russian media outlet.
“We don t have any direct evidence of any terrorist involvement yet”, he said.
Wilayat Sinai, Islamic State’s affiliate in Egypt, claimed responsibility on Twitter for downing the Airbus A321 on Saturday as it flew from the coastal resort of Sharm el Sheik to St. Petersburg.
“Believe me, the situation in Sinai – especially in this limited area – is under our full control”, he said.
Evidence is mounting that something unusual happened over the Sinai Peninsula on 31 October just before a Russian airliner broke up in midair and plunged to earth, killing all 224 people on board. However, the country’s transportation minister, Mr. Hossam Kamal has denied any abnormal happenings, “All was normal; the plane disappeared suddenly off the radar without any prior warning”, he said in a nationally televised report.
But Mike Vivian, a former head of flights operations at the Civil Aviation Authority, told Sky News Metrojet was wrong to suggest a plane could not break up in mid-air because of a technical fault, pointing to the China Airlines Flight 611 disaster in 2002.
Once black box information has been analysed “perhaps we will know more”, he added.
When a senior Metrojet official declared Monday the company had ruled out pilot error or a technical malfunction as the reason for the crash, the government responded with a swift rebuke.
If the plane’s engines become a focus of the investigation, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board will likely dispatch a team to Egypt as well, a U.S official with knowledge of the investigation said.
Asked if a terrorist attack could be ruled out, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said: “No versions could be excluded”.
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Family members had already been providing DNA samples at a crisis centre set up near Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport, now the site of an impromptu memorial where people have brought flowers and cuddly toys to commemorate the victims, many of them children.
