USA intelligence says the strong “heat flash” it detected at the time of the crash is not indicative of a missile strike, The Independent says in a separate article, citing NBC News.
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According to the US official, “the plane disintegrated at a very high altitude”, and as the satellite indicates, “there was an explosion of a few kind”.
On Tuesday, The Associated Press reported that 10 of the 224 people on board the airplane – mostly Russian tourists – had been identified.
Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi described claims that militants linked to Islamic State brought down a Russian airliner as “propaganda”.
Addressing a claim of responsibility that a group linked to the Islamic State issued shortly after the crash, el-Sissi said the comments were meant to damage “the stability and security of Egypt and the image of Egypt”, according to excerpts from his remarks posted on the BBC website.
When pressed for more details about the type of impact and what could have caused it, Mr Smirnov said he was not at liberty to discuss details because the investigation was ongoing.
A missile striking the Metrojet Airbus A321-200 was ruled out because neither a launch nor an engine burn had been detected, one of the officials said.
Meanwhile, the United States Embassy in Cairo has instructed its staff not to travel anywhere in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula as a “precautionary measure”, pending the outcome of the investigation into the crash.
However, the widow of the plane’s co-pilot told Russian TV her husband had complained about the aircraft’s technical condition.
“It’s unlikely, but I wouldn’t rule it out”, said James Clapper at the Defense One Summit in Washington.
The Russian plane that crashed in Egypt was not struck from the outside and the pilot did not make a distress call before it disappeared from radar, a source in the committee analysing the flight recorders said on Monday.
Family members have been providing DNA samples at a crisis centre set up close to the St Petersburg Pulkovo airport, now the site of an impromptu memorial where people have brought flowers and cuddly toys to commemorate the victims, many of them children.
Speaking in a TV interview, Cameron, who had earlier spoken with Russian president Vladimir Putin, said: “If anything changes, we don’t sit around and chew our pens and not act”.
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Albin said the identification could take several weeks.
