The BBC‘s
security correspondent Frank Gardner said Britain‘s security services suspect
someone with access to the plane’s baggage compartment inserted an explosive
device shortly before the plane departed.
US President Barack Obama
and Britain’s prime minister both believe a bomb may have downed a Russian
plane in Egypt, with reports Friday suggesting their theory was based on intercepted
communications.
With concerns over security
mounting, European airlines readied to bring home thousands of tourists from
the Sinai peninsula resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, from where the crashed Russian
plane took off last Saturday.
But there were angry scenes
at the airport as thousands of anxious Britons who had hoped to fly home were
sent back to their hotels after Egypt blocked additional repatriation flights.
A first flight took off for
London’s Gatwick airport after a long delay.
In a sign of mounting fears
about the security of baggage handling in Egypt, Dutch carrier KLM announced
that it had banned check-in luggage on an early flight from Cairo, mirroring
moves taken by several European airlines on Sharm flights.
The Islamic State (IS) jihadist
group has claimed responsibility for the disaster, in which the Saint
Petersburg-bound jet crashed minutes after taking off, killing all 224 mainly
Russian tourists on board.
Cairo and Moscow have
sought to downplay the suggestion of an attack.
But Obama told a US radio
station: “I think there is a possibility that there was a bomb on board and we
are taking that very seriously,” while emphasising it was too early to say for
sure.
In London, where Prime
Minister David Cameron hosted Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on
Thursday, the British premier told reporters it was “more likely than not that
it was a terrorist bomb” that caused the crash.
And The Times newspaper
reported on Friday that electronic communications intercepted by British and US
spies suggested a bomb may have been carried onto the plane.
A joint intelligence
operation used satellites to uncover the chatter between militants in Sinai and
Syria, it said.
“The tone and content of
the messages convinced analysts that a bomb had been carried on board by a
passenger or a member of the airport ground staff,” the newspaper reported,
without giving a source.
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