This article titled "Egypt plane crash: Russia says jet was bombed in terror attack" was written by Matthew Weaver in London and Alec Luhn in Moscow, for theguardian.com on Tuesday 17th November 2015 15.48 UTCThe Kremlin has said it will increase airstrikes in Syria after acknowledging for the first time that a bomb brought down the Russian jet that crashed over Egypt last month, killing all 224 people on board.
Russia has until now played down assertions from western countries that the crash was a terrorist incident, saying it was important to let the official investigation run its course.
But three days after terrorist gunmen and bombers killed 129 people in Paris, Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s FSB security service, told a meeting chaired by President Vladimir Putin on Monday night that the plane crash was “unequivocally a terrorist act”.
Bortnikov said investigators had studied the personal belongings, baggage and debris from the aircraft and concluded that an improvised bomb, packed with up to 1.5kg of TNT, exploded in mid-air. He said traces of explosives were found in the plane’s debris.
Putin said he had ordered Russia’s special services to focus on finding those responsible. “The tears in our soul and heart will remain with us forever, but this won’t stop us from finding and punishing those guilty,” he said.
“We will search for them wherever they may be hiding. We will find them anywhere on the planet and punish them.”
The FSB told the Interfax news agency on Tuesday that it was offering a $50m (£33m) reward for information leading to the capture of those responsible.
Putin has ordered the Russian air force to intensify its airstrikes in Syria. “It [the air campaign] must be intensified in such a way that the criminals understand that retribution is inevitable,” he said.
Egypt’s prime minister, Sherif Ismail, said that Egypt would take the Russian findings into consideration but the civil aviation minister, Hossam Kamel, said investigators had not found any evidence of criminal intent.
A statement from the interior ministry said it was strengthening all all security protocols at airports around Egypt, and said that no security shortcomings leading up to the plane crash had been found.
Separately, Reuters reported that Egyptian authorities had detained two employees at Sharm el-Sheikh airport in connection with the crash. “Seventeen people are being held, two of them are suspected of helping whoever planted the bomb on the plane at Sharm el-Sheikh airport,” a security official told Reuters.
The Egyptian interior ministry denied the report, saying in a statement: “This news is completely and totally untrue.”
Last week, Britain’s foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, said there was a “high probability” that a bomb planted by a supporter of Islamic State brought down the Russian airliner.
US officials also suspected that a device planted on Metrojet flight 9268 exploded shortly after it took off from Sharm on 31 October. An Isis affiliate has claimed responsibility for the crash.
For several days after the attack Russian officials were sceptical of claims that plane was bought down by terrorists. Russia’s transport minister, Maksim Sokolov, said the claim could not be considered accurate. And when the UK suspended flights to and from Sharm el-Sheikh over security concerns – stranding 20,000 tourists in the resorts – Russian politicians and media accused the UK of jumping to conclusions.
The chair of the foreign committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament, Konstantin Kosachyov, even said the UK move was meant to put “psychological pressure” on Russia over its airstrikes in Syria in support of Bashar al-Assad.
Several extremist groups called for attacks against Russia after Moscow began a campaign of airstrikes in late September.
Russian tourist flights to Sharm el-Sheikh initially continued, but they were halted when it emerged that an apparent explosion could be heard on the recovered flight recorder. Putin’s spokesman insisted at the time that the decision did not mean it was favouring the bomb theory.
Suspicions intensified in the week after the Metrojet airliner came down. Reports from the US said a “flash” from the plane was picked up by US satellites. American officials said intercepted intelligence chatter involving militant groups in Sinai supported the bomb theory.
Despite mounting evidence of a bomb on the plane, Egypt has refused to concede that terrorism was to blame. The country stands to lose a critical source of income in the region if the tourist industry is in effect shut down because of terrorism fears.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment