Airbus A321 operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia was conducting flight 9286 between the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh and Saint Petersburg when it crashed shortly after take-off in the Sinai peninsula on Saturday.
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The Egyptian-led air-crash investigation is still in its early stages.
According to a second unnamed U.S. defense official cited by the network, “the plane disintegrated at a very high altitude” following “an explosion of a few kind”.
A source in the operation headquarters told journalists that the airplane had delivered the remains and personal belongings of a few of those killed in the air crash.
The Kremlin, which previously played down a claim of responsibility from Islamic State-linked terrorists, said on Monday that “nothing can be ruled out”.
A senior defense official told NBC News late Monday that an American infrared satellite detected a heat flash at the same time and in the same vicinity over the Sinai where the Russian passenger plane crashed.
“We don’t have any direct evidence of any terrorist involvement yet”, Clapper said in Washington.
At least 163 bodies and both black boxes have now been recovered.
Metrojet also says only an external impact could have caused the crash, but wouldn’t give details…Raising even more questions into what happened to the airliner. “We (are) excluding technical problems and rejecting human error”, Alexander Smirnov, deputy director for Metrojet, said in Moscow. “The crew totally lost control and for that reason there was not one attempt to get in contact and report on the accident situation onboard”.
He added: “The only possible explanation is a mechanical force acting on the aircraft”.
The Russian government said more than 100 bodies and dozens of body parts were returned to St. Petersburg early Monday.
Interstate Aviation Committee head Viktor Sorochenko, who has been working in Egypt, said that “a first look showed that so far we can not rule out any theory”.
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Russia’s top aviation official, Alexander Neradko said Metrojet’s comments were “premature and not based on any real facts”.
