ISIS takes credit in downing Russian airliner

[Lauren Johnson]

[B]Terror group hails success, although Sinai officials say technical failure led to crash; Putin dispatches investigators[/B]



The Islamic State terror group in Egypt claimed responsibility for bringing down a Russian passenger plane on Saturday carrying 224 people, according to Hebrew media.


IS in Egypt, formerly known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, published the claim of responsibility as yet unconfirmed hours after the plane, traveling from from the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh back to St. Petersburg, crashed in the Sinai Peninsula with 217 passengers and 7 crew members on board.
"The soldiers of the caliphate succeeded in bringing down a Russian plane in Sinai," said the statement circulated on social media. "More than 220 Crusaders were on board. All were killed, praise God."

There were no survivors in the crash.

Earlier, the Russian airline operating the plane, Kogalymavia, also known as Metrojet, said there were "no grounds" to blame human error, intimating that the incident may not have been an accident. Still, security sources in Sinai told Reuters that, according to an initial investigation, the plane crashed due to technical fault.

An Egyptian aviation official says the pilot of Metrojet Flight 7K9268 had reported technical difficulties and planned an emergency landing at the nearest airport before losing contact with Egyptian air traffic controllers and crashing. Ayman al-Muqadem, a member of the Aviation Incidents Committee, said the pilot had reported his intention to attempt to land at the nearest airport.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian emergency officials to fly immediately to the wreckage of the plane.

Meanwhile, Russian authorities raided the offices of Kogalymavia in Moscow, according to Reuters, and seized documents. The reason was not immediately clear.

A statement from Egypt's Ministry of Civil Aviation said military search and rescue teams found the wreckage of the passenger jet in the Hassana area south of the city of Al-Arish, an area in northern Sinai where Egyptian security forces are fighting a burgeoning Islamic militant insurgency led by the local affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group.

The group is responsible for numerous attacks against Egyptian security services in the Sinai over the past two years.

Russia recently began its own aerial campaign against Syrian rebel groups, including IS, in war-torn Syria, in an effort to bolster its ally, Bashar Assad.

Militants in northern Sinai have not previously shot down commercial airliners or fighter-jets. They are said to have obtained Russian shoulder-fired, anti-aircraft missiles, which could be used against low-flying aircraft or helicopters. In January of last year, they claimed to have down an Egyptian military helicopter; Egypt confirmed a helicopter crash at the time.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/islamic-sta...ian-plane/

[Magda Hassan]

Sounds like it was technical problems if they had called to the Egyptian control tower and were heading back before contact was lost. ISIS just being opportunistic for propaganda purposes. They have the black box and that should show what was happening. Terrible loss of life in either case.

[Drew Phipps]

Both the United Nations and Foreign Policy Magazine have reported that quantities of man portable air defense systems ("MANPADS") have found their way into Syria (and possibly ISIS), from Libya's military stocks, with Qatari and Turkish help. (I had heard that a civilian airliner at cruising altitude and speed would be relatively safe from man portable devices)

Does this "surplus military arms from Libya to Syria" thing sound familiar to anyone else but me?

[Magda Hassan]

Does this "surplus military arms from Libya to Syria" thing sound familiar to anyone else but me?

Very familiar. They've been doing it since they killed Gaddafi.

I heard the MANPADS were in the area but also thought they were only useful for helicopters as they fly lower than the larger aircraft which has a normal cruising altitude too high for their rockets to reach.

[Drew Phipps]

I heard that too.

[Lauren Johnson]

Just from the point of view that the timing and the fact that it is a Russian airliner puts this into a very suspicious event. I'm willing to say that the plane was brought down as a black op targeting Russia. As of right now, there is nothing more to argue in favor of anything other than an accident. The timing has to be taken into account just as the crash of MH 17 argued against the Donbass rebels doing it. Cui bono? The same question has to be asked here.

A missile probably did not bring down the airplane. Here is another possibility. Very conservative Russian nationalists sabotaged the plane in order build up a war fever in Russia, a kind of 9/11 if you will. I say this to encourage imaginative thinking, which is an important skill in deep political analysis.

And to answer my question of who benefits? I don't know. If it turns out to be an accident, then certainly it is not the unfortunate passengers.

[Marlene Zenker]

Disintegrated in mid-air![URL="http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/01/middleeast/egypt-sinai-russian-plane-crash/index.html"]

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/01/middleeast...index.html[/URL]

Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt (CNN)The remains of Russian tourists killed in a passenger jet crash in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula are expected to start arriving back in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Sunday as questions swirl over what caused the disaster.

All 224 people aboard Kogalymavia Flight 9268 died in the Saturday morning crash that left debris strewn across a remote area of a region plagued by a violent Islamic insurgency.
The airliner broke into pieces in midair, Russia's state-run media quoted an aviation official as saying, but there were no additional details.
"Disintegration of the fuselage took place in the air, and the fragments are scattered around a large area (about 20 square kilometers)," Viktor Sorochenko, executive director of Russia's Interstate Aviation Committee, told journalists, according to reports.
Footage from the scene showed mangled wreckage and piles of belongings from the plane spilled over a largely flat, barren landscape.


Many of the passengers on the Airbus A321-200 aircraft, which crashed en route from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, were reported by Russian state media to be returning from vacation. Russian officials said there were 25 children aboard the plane.
At Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg, where the aircraft was supposed to end its journey, mourners paid their respects to victims at a makeshift memorial. People brought red or white carnations and stuffed toys. A table held a dozen candles. Relatives who had waited desperately for news of loved ones broke down in tears.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared Sunday a day of mourning.
'It suddenly disappeared'

It remains unclear what caused Flight 9268 to suddenly drop off radar, in clear weather after only 23 minutes in the air, and hurtle to the ground.
Speaking to high-ranking army officers in Cairo on Sunday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi asked them to observe a moment of silence before urging the public not to jump to conclusions. Determining what happened will require a lengthy investigation, he said.
"These are complicated matters that require advanced technologies and wide investigations that might go on for months," he said.





The crash is most likely the result of a technical failure, Egyptian Airports Co. chief Adel Al-Mahjoob told CNN Arabic on Saturday, although he noted that the plane passed a routine check before it took off.
Russian media outlets said that the pilot reported technical problems and requested a landing at the nearest airport before the plane went missing, but Egyptian authorities disputed that claim.
Air traffic control recordings don't show any distress calls, Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Hossam Kamel said at a news conference.
"There was nothing abnormal before the plane crash," he said. "It suddenly disappeared from the radar."

[Magda Hassan]

It does look like a high altitude disintegration or explosion. It could be a Lockerbie type explosion or it could be an onboard fire or some explosive cargo. The plane was known to be faulty according to the wife of one of the dead pilots who said her husband had complained about it. The information from the black boxes will be very important. But it seems fairly certain there is no ISIS shoot down.

[Lauren Johnson]

Here's an helicopter survey of the crash site:

[Magda Hassan]

Except for those couple of big pieces which may have broken off earlier it looks like it was all pretty much incinerated.