But the committee head, Ayman al-Muqaddam, said on Saturday (local time) that experts were still gathering information and it was too soon to announce conclusions.
Advertisement
Once a remote beach on the edge of the Red Sea, Sharm el-Sheikh has grown into the jewel of Egypt’s tourism industry, with dozens of luxury hotels and night life attracting tourists from around the world. Ireland has also suspended flights to the Red Sea resort, while at least half a dozen western European governments told people not to travel there.
USA and United Kingdom intelligence suggests a bomb may have been placed on the plane by an Islamic State affiliate, according to news reports, and immediately following the crash the terrorist group claimed responsibility on social media. “We were expecting that the technical information would be provided to us”.
Islamic State militants fighting security forces in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula have said they brought down the Airbus A321, which crashed 23 minutes after taking off from the resort of Sharm al-Sheikh one week ago, killing all 224 passengers.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s foreign minister has said that his country was not dismissing possible scenarios that led to the Russian passenger plane crash, but there was no “hypothesis” yet from a probe investigating the disaster.
“They are deployed in Sharm el-Sheikh and other airports and minimize uncontrolled activities”. As a result, Egypt’s aviation agency says, they left behind more than 120 tons of luggage, adding to the already cramped conditions at the resort’s airport. About 1,500 British tourists are expected to return home from the southern Sinai city on Saturday, now that flights have resumed, according to The Guardian. The flights will be suspended until a “proper level of air communication security” is established, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Another woman said the experience was an “absolute nightmare” and “so disorganised”.
Hurley, who said he was not notified that his flight had been canceled but found out on his own by calling home, criticized his airline. “We don’t know what happened exactly”. “I was tweeting earlier to get information, and that’s not how I should have to get information in a situation like this”. But these flights banned passengers from checking in luggage – reflecting an apparent concern about security and luggage-screening procedures at the airport. “The easyJet people were surprised we hadn’t been notified”. Monitoring a network of CCTV cameras, they were supposed to “make sure that staff don’t put things in the bags or take things out”, the source said.
Following the incident, Russian Federation has halted all of its flights to Egypt while the United Kingdom has also stopped British flights to Sharm el-Sheikh.
Russian officials also said planes would be sent to Egypt to bring back the checked baggage of Russian tourists who were forced to leave their suitcases behind. But thousands were turned away after Egypt blocked British tour operators from flying in empty aircraft to make up the backlog.
A source in Paris close to the investigation told AFP the black box data “strongly favours” the theory a bomb on board brought down the plane.
It comes a day after Egyptian investigators said a “spectral analysis” of the “nature of the noise” on the flight recorder was underway.
The incident, reported by the Daily Mail newspaper, involved a Thomson Airways plane carrying 189 passengers from London on August 23.
Advertisement
A British tourist plane heading in to land at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh came within 1,000 feet (300 metres) of a missile in August, it was reported Saturday.
