Sunday, November 8, 2015
Associated Press
CAIRO
A noise was heard in the last second of the cockpit voice recording from the Russian plane that crashed last week in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, the head of the joint investigation team said Saturday, bolstering U.S. and British suspicions that the plane was brought down by a bomb.
However, Ayman el-Muqadem warned it was too early to say what caused the plane to apparently break up in mid-flight. Analysis of the noise was underway.
“All scenarios are being considered ... it could be lithium batteries in the luggage of one of the passengers, it could be an explosion in the fuel tank, it could be fatigue in the body of the aircraft, it could be the explosion of something,” said El-Muqadem, who is Egyptian and leading the investigation committee that includes experts from Russia, France, Germany and Ireland, where the plane was registered. El-Muqadem appeared alone at the news conference in Cairo.
U.S. and British officials have cited intelligence reports as indicating that the Oct. 31 flight from the Sinai resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg was brought down by a bomb on board. All 224 people onboard, most of them Russian tourists, were killed.
Islamic State extremists claimed they brought down the Metrojet flight, without offering proof, saying it was in retaliation for Moscow’s airstrikes that began a month earlier against fighters in Syria.
Meanwhile, The airport at Egypt’s resort of Sharm el-Sheikh has long seen gaps in security, including a key baggage scanning device that often is not functioning and lax searches at an entry gate for food and fuel for the planes, security officials at the airport told The Associated Press.
Seven officials involved in security at Sharm el-Sheikh airport, several for more than a decade, told the AP of the gaps, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press. Several said the malfunctioning scanner had been noted in security reports to their superiors, but the machine was not replaced.