90% chance jet downed by bomb
Print Edition
INVESTIIGATORS of the Russian jet crash in Egypt are “90 percent sure” the noise heard in the final second of a cockpit recording was an explosion caused by a bomb, a member of the investigation team said yesterday.
The Airbus A321 crashed 23 minutes after taking off from the Sharm al-Sheikh tourist resort eight days ago, killing all 224 passengers and crew. Islamic State militants fighting Egyptian security forces in Sinai said they brought it down.
“The indications and analysis of the sound on the black box indicate it was a bomb,” said the Egyptian team member.
“We are 90 percent sure it was a bomb.”
His comments reflect a higher degree of certainty about the cause of the crash than the investigation committee has so far declared in public.
Lead investigator Ayman al-Muqaddam said on Saturday that the plane appeared to have broken up in mid-air while it was being flown on auto-pilot, and that a noise had been heard in the last second of the cockpit recording. However, he said it was too soon to draw conclusions.
Confirmation that militants brought down the jet could have a devastating impact on Egypt’s tourist industry, which has suffered from years of political turmoil.
It could also mark a new strategy by the hardline Islamic State group which holds large parts of Syria and Iraq.
Asked to explain the remaining 10 percent margin of doubt, the investigator declined to elaborate, but Muqaddam cited other possibilities on Saturday including a fuel explosion, metal fatigue in the plane or lithium batteries overheating.
Debris was scattered over a 13-kilometer area “which is consistent with an in-flight break-up,” he said.
“What happened in Sharm al-Sheikh last week, and to a lesser extent with the ... (Germanwings) aircraft, are game changers for our industry,” Emirates Aairlines President Tim Clark said, referring to the crash of a Germanwings airliner in the French Alps in March, believed crashed deliberately by its co-pilot.
“They have to be addressed at industry level because no doubt the countries I would think will make some stringent, draconian demands on the way aviation works with security,” he said at the Dubai Airshow.
British Foreign Ssecretary Philip Hammond also said the incident could lead to changes in flight security.
“If this turns out to be a device planted by an ISIL (another name for Islamic State) operative or by somebody inspired by ISIL, then clearly we will have to look again at the level of security we expect in areas where ISIL is active,” he told the BBC.
Meanwhile, 11,000 Rrussian tourists had been flown back from Egypt in the past 24 hours, the RIA news agency said yesterday, a fraction of the 80,000 who were stranded by the Kremlin’s decision on Friday to halt all flights to Egypt.
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