Russian Federation Says Sinai Crash Was a Terrorist Act

On October 31, a Kogalymavia aircraft traveling from Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board.

“Seventeen people are being held, two of them are suspected of helping whoever planted the bomb on the plane at Sharm al-Sheikh airport”, said one of the security officials who both declined to be named.

The passenger jet was brought down by a bomb estimated to contain 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of explosives, Russia’s Federal Security Service said Tuesday.

“It is not the first time that Russia confronts barbarous terrorist crimes”, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a meeting late Monday with his security chiefs.

“It can be unambiguously said that this is a terrorist act”, the security chief was quoted as saying.

“One can definitely say that this was a terrorist act”, Bortnikov said at the official meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Also on Tuesday, a US defense official said Russian Federation had conducted a “significant number of strikes” in Raqqa in northern Syria in the past several hours.

Although Russian Federation has not officially designated ISIS as the culprit, Putin added that Russia’s military operations inside Syria will not just continue, but will intensify “so that the criminals will understand that revenge is unavoidable”, CNN reports. The leaders from the Group of 20 rich and developing nations had vowed to work together to combat the Islamic State group. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for downing the airliner.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the president’s order didn’t mean that Russian Federation was considering sending ground troops to Syria. Ordering the country’s secret service to hunt down those responsible for blowing up the plane, he said the effort to bring them to justice should be exhaustive.

Advertisement

“We must do this without any statute of limitations and we must find out all their names”, he said, invoking Russia’s right to self defence under the United Nations charter.