UK Says Terrorist Bomb May Have Caused Russian Plane Crash
November 4, 2014
Today, the government of the United Kingdom suspended all flights between Britain and the Egyptian beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Prime Minister David Cameron’s government stated that it had received intelligence reports that the Russian plane that crashed in Sinai last Saturday, October 31, was brought down by a terrorist bomb. There are currently between 10,000 and 20,000 British citizens in the Egyptian resort who may be affected by the flight ban. Talks that were scheduled before this latest intelligence information came in are due to begin this evening between Cameron and Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.
Most of the passengers on the downed Russian flight were families that had been vacationing on the Red Sea. The Airbus A321-200 was traveling between Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt’s southern Sinai Peninsula and Pulkovo Airport in Saint Petersburg, Russia, when it crashed 23 minutes into the flight. The airplane used for the flight, charter flight 9268, was leased by Metrojet, a Russian airline. The aircraft was at an altitude of around 30,000 feet (9,144 meters) when, according to aviation officials, it broke apart in mid-air. At the crash site, fragments of the plane and debris cover some 7.5 square miles (around 20 square kilometers).
Soon after the crash, the terrorist group Islamic State (ISIS) claimed it had shot down the plane. Some military analysts discounted this, claiming that ISIS does not have the ground-based weapons necessary to shoot down a plane at such a high altitude. The flight downed over Ukraine in 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, was hit at about 30,000 feet with a Russian Buk missile system, but most terrorism experts felt fairly certain such weapons were not currently under ISIS’s control. If terrorism were to blame for the crash, most experts thought a bomb placed on the plane before takeoff was more likely.
Other Behind the Headlines articles
- 224 Killed in Russian Plane Crash (Nov. 2, 2015)
- Malaysian Airliner Shot Down Over Ukraine (July 18, 2014)
- Missiles Down More Military Jets Over Eastern Ukraine (July 24, 2014)
- The Downing of MH17, One Year Later (July 17, 2015)
- A Dutch Report on a Tragedy (October 14, 2015)
