Russia, Egypt reject speculation about terrorist bomb in jet crash

Doug Stanglin | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Russia and Egypt deny Metrojet bomb claims Egypt and Russia are denying claims that a bomb caused a Metrojet passenger plane to crash over the weekend. They said the information that the UK and U.S. revealed on Wednesday was premature.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday there is a "strong possibility" a terrorist bomb brought down a Russian jet over the Sinai Peninsula, even as Russia and Egypt dismissed the assertion as premature speculation.

President Obama said Thursday: "I think there's a possibility that there was a bomb on board. And we're taking that very seriously."

"We're going to spend a lot of time just making sure our own investigators and own intelligence community find out what's going on before we make any definitive pronouncements. But it's certainly possible that there was a bomb on board," Obama told KIRO in Seattle, in a series of radio interviews.

France joined Britain and Ireland in suspending all flights to the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheik. The ill-fated Russian Metrojet left the resort's airport Saturday morning before crashing into the Sinai Peninsula less than 30 minutes later, killing all 224 onboard.

Cameron's office said flights to bring back stranded British tourists from Sharm el-Sheik will begin Friday. Additional security measures will be in place on the flights, and passengers will be allowed to bring only hand luggage. Checked bags will be transported separately, Cameron's office said Thursday in a statement.

As many as 20,000 Britons are in the Red Sea resort without air transport since flights were suspended, the BBC reported.

Britain "continues to advise against all but essential travel by air to or from Sharm el-Sheik airport, but we are continuing to work with the Egyptians to get back to normal service as soon as possible,” the statement said.

The director of the airport was fired Wednesday.

Metrojet blamed "external influence" for the crash, but the head of Russia's aviation agency called such talk premature. Thursday, the airline said it suspended all flights of Airbus A321 jets in its fleet.

A Sinai affiliate of the Islamic State militant group claimed it brought down the jet in the Sinai, where Egypt is fighting an insurgency. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who was on an official visit to London on Thursday, called the terrorist group's pronouncement “propaganda.”

The Elysee Palace in Paris said Thursday the decision to cancel flights to the resort was made "to ensure the safety of people from France," the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported.

Cameron emphasized that a final determination on the cause of the crash depends on the completion of the investigation in Egypt, the Associated Press reported. “We don’t know for certain that it was a terrorist bomb … (but it’s a) strong possibility,” Cameron said before his meeting with Sisi.

Cameron said the decision to suspend British flights was based on “intelligence and information we had that gave us the concern that it was more likely than not a terrorist bomb.”

After his meeting with Cameron, Sisi said the two countries were “working intensively together in a spirit of close cooperation ... to address this and get back to normal as soon as possible.”

The Egyptian leader noted British experts looked at security at Sharm el-Sheik airport 10 months ago and were “happy” with what they found. Egypt is “completely ready to cooperate with all of our friends” on ensuring the safety of foreign tourists, he said.

In Moscow, Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, insisted that aviation investigators were considering all possible theories for the cause of the crash, and there are "no reasons to voice just one theory as reliable — only investigators can do that,” according to the Russian Interfax news agency.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that if Britain had information about a bomb, it was “really shocking” it hasn’t shared it with Russia, the news agency ITAR-Tass reported.

Cameron spoke by phone late Thursday with Putin to express his condolences over the loss of Russian life and to relay British "concerns that the plane may have been brought down by an explosive device," the prime minister's office said in a statement.

A U.S. official briefed on the matter said intercepted communication played a role in the tentative conclusion that the Islamic State's Sinai affiliate planted an explosive device on the jet, the AP reported. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss intelligence matters publicly.

Contributing: David Jackson