The Islamic State group has released a photo (above) of the bomb it says was used to bring down a Russian passenger plane in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula last month, killing everyone on board. The picture was published in the latest issue of the extremist group's English-language magazine, with the caption: Image of the IED used to bring down the Russian airliner.Rico says the Russians have the anticipated reaction in a Reuters article by Andrew Osborn:
The picture showed a yellow can of Schweppes Gold, a flavored soda marketed in Egypt, and what appeared to be other bomb components made of plastic and metal. The group also published a picture of what it said were passports belonging to people who died in the plane crash. The photos could not be independently verified.
The extremist group, which has a powerful affiliate in the Sinai, had previously claimed to have downed the plane, which was mainly carrying Russian tourists, without offering further details. It said the attack was to avenge Russia's air campaign against the group in Syria.
The group said it "discovered a way to compromise the security at the Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport" without providing further details. It said it initially planned to bring down a plane from one of the countries participating in the US-led coalition that has been striking it in Syria and Iraq. But it says it changed the target to a Russian plane after Moscow began launching airstrikes in Syria in September of 2015.
Russia's FSB security service said that a bomb brought down the plane, after Western officials had earlier expressed similar suspicions. Egyptian authorities have declined to comment on what caused the 31 October crash, saying a multi-national investigation is still underway.
Bob Ayers, a former CIA officer and an international security analyst, said it would be "easy" to bring down a commercial airliner with a device hidden inside a soda can like the one the Islamic State group says it used against the Metrojet flight. "To bring down an airplane, you don't need to blow it apart, you just need enough to rupture the pressure hull of the aircraft and the air pressure will do the work for you," he said. He said a can with a device inside could "blow a really nice hole" in an airplane and was, in some ways, an ideal size for an attack. Ayers said there would be little in the way of detection devices that could prevent such a device from being brought onto a plane in cases where a member of the ground crew was willing to take a bribe.
Suspicions that a bomb caused the crash have led to flight cancellations to and from Egypt, and dealt a major blow to its vital tourism industry.
The UK banned flights to Sharm el-Sheikh on 4 November. Russia banned all flights to Egypt a day later, and last Friday it banned Egypt's national carrier from flying to Russia.
Earlier Wednesday, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Egypt understands the Russian people's pain. Egypt's presidential spokesman Alaa Yousef confirmed the two leaders spoke by phone in a statement that made no mention of a bombing.
President Vladimir Putin vowed to hunt down those responsible for blowing up a Russian airliner over Egypt and intensified air strikes against militants in Syria, after the Kremlin concluded a bomb had destroyed the plane last month, killing over two hundred people.
Putin ordered the Russian navy in the eastern Mediterranean to coordinate its actions on the sea and in the air with the French navy, after the Kremlin used long-range bombers and cruise missiles in Syria, and announced it would expand its strike force by forty planes. "We will find them anywhere on the planet and punish them," Putin said of the plane bombers at a sombre Kremlin meeting. The FSB security service swiftly announced a fifty million dollar bounty in a global manhunt for the bombers.
Until recently, Russia had played down assertions from Western countries that the 31 October crash was the work of terrorists, saying it was important to let the official investigation run its course. But, four days after Islamist gunmen and bombers killed at least a hundred people in Paris, France, Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the FSB, said in televised comments that traces of foreign-made explosive had been found on fragments of the downed plane and on passengers' personal belongings. "We can now unequivocally say it was a terrorist act," Bortnikov said.
Egyptian authorities have detained employees of the Sharm al-Sheikh airport, where the downed plane originated, for questioning, two security officials and an airport employee said. "Seventeen people are being held, two of them are suspected of helping whoever planted the bomb on the plane at Sharm al-Sheikh airport," said one of the security officials, who both declined to be named.
The Airbus A321, operated by Metrojet, had been returning Russian holiday makers from the Egyptian resort to St. Petersburg when it broke up over the Sinai, killing all on board. A group affiliated with the Islamic State claimed responsibility.
Putin, wearing a dark suit, presided over a minute of silence in memory of the victims at the Kremlin meeting, before telling security and military chiefs the incident was one of the bloodiest crimes in modern Russian history. "Our air force's work in Syria must not simply be continued," he said. "It must be intensified in such a way that the criminals understand that retribution is inevitable."
Putin visited the defense ministry's command center in Moscow to hear reports from military chiefs about what they were doing to implement his orders.
As dozens of uniformed servicemen watched on, the defense minister and top military officials gave Putin their reports, saying that long-range bombers had delivered thirty cruise missiles and that Russia would bolster its strike force of around fifty planes and helicopters with a further forty aircraft. "You are defending Russia and its citizens," Putin told the military chiefs. "I want to thank you for your service and wish you luck."
Russia began air strikes in Syria at the end of September. It has always said its main target is the Islamic State, but most of its bombs in the past hit territory held by other groups opposed to its ally, President Bashar al-Assad.
A senior French government source said Russia had launched air strikes against the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa in northern Syria, signaling that Moscow was becoming more concerned about the threat posed by IS.
A French defense official said Russia's realization that its plane had been felled by a bomb was a wake-up call for Moscow. "What's changed is less that France has changed, but that Russia has," said the official. "Russia has acknowledged that the plane was an attack carried out by Daesh (aka the Islamic State). Russia is now beginning to say to itself that Daesh is also its enemy, and has to be hit."
Putin, in language reminiscent of how he talked about Chechen militants during a war when he came to power fifteen years ago, ordered the secret services to hunt down those responsible. "We must do this without any statute of limitations and we must find all their names," he said, invoking Russia's right to self defense under the United Nations charter. "Anyone who tries to help the criminals should know that the consequences for trying to shelter them will fall completely on their shoulders."
Neil MacFarquhar has an article in The New York Times about the Russian reaction:
Russia said for the first time that a bomb aboard a Russian charter jet full of vacationers had destroyed the aircraft that crashed more than two weeks ago on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, and the Kremlin responded immediately by escalating airstrikes across Syria.
The Russians said they were coordinating their military campaign with France in sharply ratcheting up attacks on Syrian territory, especially areas held by the Islamic State, the militant group that has asserted responsibility for destroying the Russian jetliner and for the deadly attacks across Paris, France.
The timing of such a highly orchestrated announcement, after an outraged France had already started striking Islamic State targets and had called for a united front against the group, suggested that the Kremlin was using the moment to help rebuild frayed relations with the West.
The Kremlin also announced that President Vladimir V. Putin and his French counterpart, François Hollande, had spoken by telephone, had agreed to coordinate military attacks in Syria, and will meet on 26 November in Moscow.
In a military briefing for Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu that was televised live nationwide, it was announced that Russia had deployed cruise missiles, long-range bombers flying from Russia, and other warplanes.
“A massive airstrike is targeting ISIL sites in Syrian territory,” Shoigu said, using one of the acronyms for the Islamic State. “The number of sorties has been doubled, which makes it possible to deliver powerful pinpoint strikes upon ISIL fighters all throughout the Syrian territory.”
Russia acknowledged that a bomb downed the Metrojet Airbus A321, killing all aboard, after seventeen days of hedging, even though it was increasingly clear that Russian investigators had reached that conclusion.
Putin and his defense chief were shown sitting in a three-story military command center with a map of Syria the size of a movie screen on one wall. In a scene that could have been lifted from a James Bond film, scores of military men, many wearing headsets, were lined up in desks on the main floor and overhead balconies, all facing the screen.
Egyptian officials have repeatedly asserted that it was premature to conclude that a bomb had destroyed the Russian jetliner, with some saying such an explanation was part of an international conspiracy against their country. But Egypt’s position has become harder to maintain in recent days, as the Russian government, one of its closest allies, gave increasing indications that it believed a bomb was the most likely cause. The Russians moved to sever almost all air links with Egypt.
The plane crashed minutes after departing Sharm el Sheikh, a Red Sea resort now reeling from a loss of tourism. Russia’s confirmation that the plane was felled by a bomb— presumably smuggled through the Sharm el Sheikh airport— could further weaken Egypt’s vital tourism industry, and undermines government claims of progress in vanquishing militants based in Sinai.
After hours of silence following the Russian announcement, Egyptian officials seemed to be gingerly walking back their denials. Egypt’s civil aviation minister said the committee investigating the crash had “not arrived at any criminal evidence”, but a statement from the Interior Ministry included the possibility of a “terrorist attack”, while announcing enhanced security measures at airports.
“This is the first time that the Egyptian authorities admit the possibility that whatever happened to the Russian plane was a terrorist attack,” said Mustapha Kamel al-Sayyid, a political science professor at Cairo University and the American University in Cairo. While the change was “not easy” for the Egyptian government, he said, it appeared to reflect an attempt to avoid any rift with the Russians.
Alexander V. Bortnikov, the head of the Federal Security Service, said in remarks to Russia’s Security Council on Monday and broadcast on Tuesday morning that “we can say that this was definitely a terrorist act.” An “improvised explosive device” detonated soon after the plane took off, he said, adding that “the plane disintegrated in midair, which explains the widely scattered fuselage pieces.”
The Russians did not acknowledge that the Islamic State had planted the bomb, but the Russian attacks that followed on parts of Syria held by the Islamic State, presented in the live television briefing, left no doubt that the Russians were intent on showing they blamed the group.
Russia fired over thirty cruise missiles from the eastern Mediterranean, hitting more than a dozen targets in Aleppo and Idlib, according to General Valery Gerasimov, the Russian military’s chief of staff. Military aircraft, including long-range bombers flying from Russia, flew over a hundred sorties, hitting nearly three hundred targets and destroying over a hundred, the defense minister said. The Russian Air Force deployed in Syria has flown over two thousand combat missions since the attacks started 48 days ago, General Gerasimov said.
As Russia increased strikes on the Islamic State, however, Russian forces continued to hit insurgents elsewhere in Syria who do not belong to that group and who have even fought against it while receiving American support, underscoring the complexities international powers face in working together in the Syrian conflict.
The Russians did not specify the locations of their strikes. But insurgents and residents in Syria reported Russian aerial assaults where the Islamic State has no presence, in the towns of Saraqeb, in Idlib province, and Atareb, in western Aleppo province.
Putin was shown on television ordering one naval commander to coordinate with a French aircraft carrier group and to “work together as allies”. France’s defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, speaking on the TF1 nightly news, said ten French fighter jets had conducted airstrikes against the Islamic State in the Syrian city of Raqqa. It was the third time since the attacks in Paris that France targeted Islamic State installations there.
Since its intervention in Syria, Russia has focused mostly on opponents of President Bashar al-Assad and not the Islamic State. The diplomatic rewards of changing focus and answering the call of Hollande for a united military effort against the Islamic State are already palpable.
A pariah in Western leadership circles since his invasion of the Crimea last year and his support of separatists in the eastern Ukraine, Putin was suddenly front and center at the Group of 20 summit meeting this week in Antalya, Turkey. For Putin, ending the diplomatic isolation could be an important first step in persuading the West to lift sanctions on his wobbly economy, imposed because of the dispute in the Ukraine.
Bortnikov, the head the Federal Security Service, said crash investigators estimated that the Metrojet bomb had been composed of up to a kilogram of TNT. He added that “foreign made” explosive material had been found in the wreckage.
Russia also offered fifty million dollars for any information leading to the capture of the bomb plotters. “We will search for them everywhere, no matter where they are hiding,” Putin said at a meeting with his security council. “We will find them in any place on the planet and will punish them.”
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