US officials say in flight explosion may have brought down Russian plane
Date
11/3/2015 7:54:04 AM
(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly)
US officials ruled out Monday the possibility that a surface-to-air missile brought down a Russian commercial airline in Egypt's Sinai on Saturday killing all 224 passengers on board according to a report by NBC News.
Officials said that satellite imagery identified a heat flash at the point where the aircraft crashed leading analysts to believe that an in-flight explosion rather than external tampering brought the plane down.
"The speculation that this plane was brought down by a missile is off the table" an official told NBC. Yet the possibility that the explosion was fueled by an on-board terror attack has not been ruled out.[Get Flash Player]
The Russian Airbus A-321 operated by the airline Kogalymavia with registration number KGL-9268 was flying from the Sinai Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg in Russia Saturday when it went down in a desolate mountainous area of central Sinai soon after daybreak.
It took off at 5:51 a.m. Cairo time and disappeared from radar screens 23 minutes later Egypt's Civil Aviation Ministry said in a statement.
The plane was at an altitude of 31000 feet when it vanished from radar screens. It was completely destroyed and all those on board died.
The circumstances of the crash are still under investigation.
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