The Russian jet that crashed in Egypt this weekend may have been taken down by an Islamic State bomb, US officials told CNN and NBC on Wednesday.
“There is a definite feeling it was an explosive device planted in luggage or somewhere on the plane,” an American official told CNN. US investigators believed Islamic State terrorists or sympathizers may have been behind the attack, NBC reported.
Both news outlets quoted unnamed American officials in their reports. There has been no official remarks connecting the Islamic State and the Russian airliner.
Earlier on Wednesday an IS-affiliated group claimed responsibility for the crash that killed over 200 passengers and crew aboard.
Intelligence investigation of the passenger manifest of Metrojet Flight 9268 yielded no red flags, NBC quoted the US official saying.
Another American official told CNN that intel potentially connecting the Islamic State jihadist group to the attack was based partly on monitoring its member’s communications, not just the announcement.
Just hours beforehand, the British government said it was increasingly concerned that the Russian jet that crashed in Egypt was brought down by a bomb, announcing that it is suspending flights to and from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
“We have become concerned that the plane may well have been brought down by an explosive device,” Cameron’s office said in a statement.
The British government’s crisis committee was due to meet later Wednesday.
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Russia and Egypt have rejected the claim.
On Wednesday, an IS affiliate in the Sinai allegedly reiterated its claim to have downed the plane.
On Wednesday, IS Sinai released a statement reiterating the contention that the Russian passenger jet which fell out of the sky over the Sinai Peninsula last weekend was “downed” by an act of terrorism. The ISIS “home office” (so to speak) in Raqqa aired a video congratulating their Egyptian “brothers” on the “achievement.”
In the immediate aftermath of the crash, officials attempted to discredit the ISIS video which purported to show the plane exploding in mid-air. While we were quick to note that it’s virtually impossible to verify the video’s authenticity, we also pointed out that if the footage was indeed genuine, someone on the ground knew exactly when to start filming which would certainly seem to suggest that whatever happened to the Russian jet was premeditated.
Whatever one chooses to believe, evidence continues to pile up to support the contention that the plane broke apart in the sky - i.e. that the plane exploded.
For instance, an Egyptian forensics expert noted that the scattering of body parts over an eight kilometer radius seems to prove that there was an explosion of board. Meanwhile the UK on Wednesday suspended flights from Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt after saying that the Russian jet “may well” have been destroyed by an “explosive device.”
That seemed to indicate that Western governments were set to “confirm” ISIS’ contention that a bomb is to blame for the crash.
Now, Western media are reporting that according to US “intelligence”, an ISIS bomb was indeed the cause of the catastrophe that claimed the lives of 224 people last Saturday. Here’s Reuters:
Evidence now suggests that a bomb planted by the Islamic State militant group is the likely cause of last weekend's crash of a Russian airliner over Egypt's Sinai peninsula, U.S. and European security sources said on Wednesday.
Islamic State, which controls swathes of Iraq and Syria and is battling the Egyptian army in the Sinai Peninsula, said again on Wednesday it brought down the airplane, adding it would eventually tell the world how it carried out the attack.
The Airbus A321M crashed on Saturday in the Sinai Peninsula shortly after taking off from the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on its way to the Russian city of St Petersburg, killing all 224 people on board.
The U.S. and European security sources stressed they had reached no final conclusions about the crash.
There's significant evidence that a bomb brought down Russia's Metrojet Flight 9268 over the Sinai Peninsula last weekend, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday, saying U.S. investigators are focusing on ISIS operatives or sympathizers as the likely bombers.
U.S. officials stressed that while they believe it's "likely" that a bomb was on the plane, it's still too early to conclude that for certain. They told NBC News that mechanical failure remains a possibility.
A U.S. official said investigators are looking at the possibility that an explosive device was planted aboard the plane by ground crews, baggage handlers or other ground staff at the Sharm el-Sheikh airport before takeoff. Passengers and the flight crew weren't significantly suspected after intelligence scrub of the passenger manifest and the crew showed no one with suspected ties to any terrorist group, officials said.
Three top officials at the airport, including the head of security, were fired Wednesday after investigators uncovered numerous lax security procedures, officials told NBC News.
So apparently, US officials have more evidence about what happened to this plane than either the Russians or the Egyptians do and Washington is now confident enough to say that ISIS is "likely" responsible.
Needless to say, there are any number of questions that should be asked here, but at least NBC gets one thing right:
A U.S. official told NBC News he expects Russia to retaliate "heavily and militarily" if the theory is borne out.
The Russian jet that crashed in Egypt this weekend may have been taken down by an Islamic State bomb, US officials told CNN and NBC on Wednesday.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said there was a “significant possibility” that the crash was caused by an explosive device on board.
He announced that Britain was suspending all flights from Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh, was advising against “all but essential” flights to the area, and was preparing to arrange for Britons already there to be returned to the UK.
“There is a definite feeling it was an explosive device planted in luggage or somewhere on the plane,” an American official told CNN. US investigators believed Islamic State terrorists or sympathizers may have been behind the attack, NBC reported.
1 comment:
Is "US Intelligence" an oxymoron these days?
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