It is “more likely than not” that a bomb brought down Metrojet Flight 9268 over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, British Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday.
Cameron’s comment came as Russian and Egyptian officials warned about jumping to conclusions, and he conceded that he couldn’t confirm “with certainty” why the Russian commercial jet crashed. Still, it was enough reason to keep British citizens from flying back this week from Sharm el-Sheikh, a popular tourist destination in Egypt, until safety measures at the resort’s airport could be bolstered.
Cameron’s office announced Thursday that outbound flights from Sharm el-Sheikh to the United Kingdom will resume Friday, but flights to the Red Sea resort remain on hold.
U.S. officials have told CNN that intelligence suggests that ISIS or its affiliates planted a bomb on the Russian plane, which broke apart in midair, killing all 224 people on board. The flight was heading from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, Russia.
A U.S. official told CNN that the “specificity” in the chatter surrounding the crash of the Russian jet drew the attention of the U.S. intelligence community. The official says “the specific nature of the discussion” that officials monitored made them take notice.
The intelligence also suggests that someone at the Sharm el-Sheikh airport helped get a bomb onto the plane, another U.S. official said.
Still, the U.S. government has not made its own determination as to what downed the plane, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Thursday. “We can’t rule anything out,” he said.
Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Hossam Kamel said officials have found no evidence to support the theory that a bomb caused the plane to crash.
Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom has shared intelligence about a possible bomb with Egyptian authorities, Kamel told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
First funeral in Russia
Almost all of the victims on the doomed plane were Russian, and the first funeral for one of them took place Thursday.
The service was for one of the five residents of the city of Veliky Novgorod who have been identified, the city’s mayor office told CNN on Thursday.
A memorial service was held in St. Boris and Gleb Church for crash victim Nina Luschenko, the office said. Among the 224 crash victims, 15 of them were from the Novgorod region, including two children.
Novgorod local and regional authorities will provide financial assistance to the victims’ families, at more than $2,300 per victim, the mayor’s office said.
Why some suspect ISIS involvement
The signs pointing to ISIS, another U.S. official said, are partially based on monitoring of the terrorist group’s internal messages. Those messages are separate from public ISIS claims of responsibility, the official said.
In an audio message from ISIS’ Sinai branch that was posted on terror-related social media accounts Wednesday, the organization adamantly insisted that it brought down the flight.
Typically, ISIS is quick to trumpet how and who carried out any attacks for purposes of praise and propaganda. To some, the fact that ISIS hasn’t provided details in this case raises doubt about the group’s repeated claims of responsibility.
Officials in Egypt and Russia have said there’s no evidence to support ISIS’ claims.
Foreign tourists stranded in Egypt
Concerns that the plane may have been bombed left thousands of foreign tourists stuck in Egypt.
About 1 million British tourists visit Sharm el-Sheikh every year, Cameron said Thursday at a news conference alongside Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in London. Roughly 3,500 British nationals were due to fly out of Sharm el-Sheikh on Thursday. The most important thing, the British leader said, is for the tourists to come home safely.
Sisi said Egypt had already been cooperating with British teams on airport security going back 10 months.
After the meeting, Cameron’s office said the two countries “agreed on a package of additional security measures that is being put into place rapidly” and that flights back to the United Kingdom will resume Friday.
“Outbound flights from the UK to Sharm el-Sheikh remain suspended and the Foreign Office continues to advise against all but essential travel by air to or from Sharm el-Sheikh airport but we are continuing to work with the Egyptians to get back to normal service as soon as possible,” Cameron’s office said.
Militant battleground
Sharm el-Sheikh, where Flight 9268 began its journey, is a beach resort at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. The plane crashed about 300 kilometers (185 miles) north of the area, Egyptian authorities said.
Sinai has been a battleground between ISIS-affiliated militants and Egyptian security forces in recent years. Hundreds have died in the fighting.
If a bomb did cause the Sinai plane crash, one conceivable motive for ISIS to attack a Russian airliner is that Russia started launching airstrikes in Syria in September, saying it was coordinating with the Syrian regime to combat ISIS and other terrorists.