“The speculation that this plane was brought down by a missile is off the table”, the American defense official told NBC News.
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Both Cairo and Moscow have played down a claim by Egypt’s IS branch that it brought down the plane which was bound for St Petersburg in Russian Federation from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
On Monday, Kogalymavia, which operates flights under the name Metrojet, insisted that there wasn’t any technical failure and the plane tragedy was due to “external” factors.
Islamic State militants said on the day of the crash that they had “brought down” the Russian plane to avenge those killed as a result of Moscow’s recent air campaign in Syria, launched in support of ISIS adversary President Bashar Assad. He said the firm had ruled out a technical fault or human error and that the plane had sustained “significant damage to its construction that did not allow it to continue the flight”.
A USA defence official also said he was sceptical. The black box recordings reveal the pilots had no time to send a distress signal.
An executive with the Russian airline company blames an “external influence”.
Several aviation experts questioned whether the airline had enough information so early in the investigation, without the benefit of a complete readout from “black box” flight recorders, to say what may or may not have caused the crash. This official said missiles able to shoot down an airplane at high altitude are owned by “state actors”.
United States Intel Chief, James Clapper said on Monday that no evidence has surfaced to indicate what caused the deadly crash, terrorism can not be ruled out.
In a statement, the Embassy said the travel ban was in place as a precautionary measure pending the outcome of the investigation into the crash.
Russian officials say the plane likely broke up mid-air, however the head of Russia’s Transport Agency, Alexander Neradko called on “the aviation community to refrain from any premature conclusions”. “But that is very quick, if they can do that and get the forensic wreckage evidence into the labs, that will be good news”, he said.
A plane carrying the remains of additional victims of the plane crash is expected in St. Petersburg. The Wilayat Sinai group, also known as Ansar Bayt al Maqdis, or Partisans of Jerusalem, posted a grainy video on Twitter shortly after the crash that appeared to show a jetliner exploding in the sky and falling in smoldering pieces.
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“I would like to once again express my condolences to the families and relatives of the victims”, Putin said Monday, adding, “Without any doubt everything should be done so that an objective picture of what happened is created, so that we know what happened”.
