A militant group claimed that it brought down the plane but Experts say the claim “can’t be considered accurate”

A Russian airliner that was reported to be crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula actually broke up in mid-air, an official of a Moscow-based aviation agency said on Sunday after visiting the disaster site, but stressed it was too early to draw conclusions from this.

The Russian Airbus A321 which crashed in Egypt Saturday killing 224 broke into pieces midair, but it is still too early to determine the cause, Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK) said Sunday.

“It is too early to draw conclusions,” MAK executive director Viktor Sorochenko said. “Disintegration of the fuselage took place in the air, and the fragments are scattered around a large area [about 20 square kilometers]”, the official added.

The Moscow-based committee represents governments of the Commonwealth of Independent States, which groups Russia and other former Soviet republics.

Egypt President says the investigation will take months

In a separate development, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said the investigation into the crash causes could take months. “This is a complicated matter and requires advanced technologies and broad investigations that could take months,” he said in a televised speech on Sunday.

Egyptian analysts began examining the contents of the two “black box” recorders recovered from the airliner although the process, according to a civil aviation source, could take days. However, Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov told Russia 24 television that this work had not yet started.

Militant group say they shot down the plane but Experts reject the claim

A militant group affiliated to Islamic State in Egypt said in a statement that it brought down the plane “in response to Russian airstrikes that killed hundreds of Muslims on Syrian land”, but Sokolov told Interfax news agency the claim “can’t be considered accurate”.

Egypt’s civilian aviation ministry said the plane had been at an altitude of 9,450m (31,000ft) when it disappeared.

Militants in the area are not believed to have missiles capable of hitting a plane at 30,000 feet.

Security experts say a plane flying at that altitude would be beyond the range of a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile (Manpad), which Sinai militants are known to possess.

Islamic State (ISIS) websites have in the past claimed responsibility for actions that have not been conclusively attributed to them. Officials say there is no evidence to suggest so far that a bomb could have brought down the plane, point out a report.

The Metrojet plane, bound for St. Petersburg in Russia, crashed 23 minutes after it took off from Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday morning. The 224 people on board, all Russian except for four Ukrainians and one Belarusian, died.

Wreckage was found in the Hasana area and bodies removed, along with the plane’s “black box”.