“I have to fly out today at any cost; my son is getting married tomorrow, and I am still here”, said desperate British holidaymaker Jane Kelly. It could well be directed against any other plane of any other country.
Advertisement
CAIRO (AP) – Egypt’s benchmark stock index plunged 4.4 percent on Tuesday after steadily declining since Russia suspended flights to Egypt following the October 31 Russian plane crash in the Sinai Peninsula. Meanwhile, another special flight is heading back to Russian Federation – one with the victims remains, fourth since the plane crashed, to continue identification process.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said earlier on Monday that “The possibility of an act of terror is of course there as the reason for what happened”.
Ireland has also suspended flights to the Red Sea resort, while at least a half-dozen Western European governments told their citizens not to travel there.
An unnamed USA official and diplomatic source said that Jerusalem handed over information about the blast to the U.S. and UK. This warning does not include the coastal resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, the area within the Sharm el-Sheikh perimeter barrier, the Sharm el-Sheikh worldwide Airport and the areas of Hadaba, Naama Bay, Nabq, Sharks Bay and Sharm el Maya, the department said.
‘Sadly there are many, many people who can do that.
In November 2014 his Sinai-based organisation pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed ISIS caliph, in return for weapons, finance and potential bomb-making know-how.
All of them – except for Corendon – then resumed their operations to the resort after the warning was downgraded a month later.
The ministry kept in place a specific warning for terrorist attacks in the airspace over the whole of the Sinai peninsula, a foreign affairs spokeswoman said.
British media reported Saturday that a plane carrying tourists to Sharm El-Sheikh in August came within 300 meters of a rocket on Aug. 23.
Extra security checks on the way?
Could Islamic State have bombed Flight 9268?
Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri has ruefully stated that intelligence over the bomb theory in the Russian plane crash was not shared with his country’s security apparatuses.
The British government and US officials have said intelligence suggests the plane was downed by a bomb, but Egypt says there’s still no confirmation of what caused the crash, or the source of a noise heard in the last second of the cockpit voice recording.
Advertisement
Russia will send 44 planes to repatriate its nationals, the Russian Federal Air Transport Agency said, and repatriations are expected to take a fortnight. The IS affiliate in Egypt is waging a bloody insurgency in north Sinai that has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers.
