[Peetwo]

Update to 7K9268:

Russia Confirms Bomb Brought Down Plane in Egypt

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
NOV. 17, 2015
 



 

The crash site of the Russian jetliner in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in October. Credit Maxim Grigoryev/Russia's Emergency Ministry, Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


MOSCOW — Russia confirmed for the first time on Tuesday that a bomb brought down a Russian charter jet over the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt more than two weeks ago, killing all 224 people on board.

The head of the Federal Security Service, Alexander Bortnikov, said “an improvised explosive device” had detonated soon after the plane took off from the resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh.

“The plane disintegrated in midair, which explains the widely scattered fuselage pieces,” Mr. Bortnikov said.

Experts have focused on the idea that a bomb brought down the plane since it went down on Oct. 31. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, claimed responsibility for the attack within hours, although it did not provide any proof.

The announcement from the Kremlin was the first, clearly definitive statement from Russia that the plane was brought down by a terrorist act, although leaders had been moving in that direction after initially criticizing other governments that suggested a bomb was responsible.

What We Know and Don’t Know About the Russian Plane Crash
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A Russian flight crashed in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt on Oct. 31, killing all 224 people on board. Officials are investigating what might have caused an explosion that brought down the plane.






Most tourist flights to the Red Sea resort have been suspended since the crash because of security concerns that a member of airport staff was able to slip the bomb on board

The bomb contained up to 1 kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of TNT, Mr. Bortnikov said, adding that “foreign made” explosive material was found on parts of the plane and other objects that were examined.

Russia has offered $50 million for any information leading to the capture of those who carried out the attack, and President Vladimir V. Putin vowed to track them down.

“We will search for them everywhere, no matter where they are hiding,” Mr. Putin said at a meeting with his security council that was broadcast on national television. “We will find them in any place on the planet and will punish them.”

Mr. Putin said the attacks by the Russian air force in Syria would not only continue but intensify.

“Our military work in Syria must not only be continued, but strengthened so that criminals understand that punishment is inevitable,” Mr. Putin said.

The Ministry of Defense and the military had been ordered to draw up plans, he said.

In claiming responsibility, the Islamic State branch on the Sinai Peninsula said the attack came in retaliation for Russia’s deployment of its military in Syria, where it is trying to shore up the rule of President Bashar al-Assad by attacking his opponents.

A spokesman for Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment on the Russian statement.

Egyptian officials have dismissed the possibility of terrorism, sometimes suggesting that theories of a militant attack are part of an international conspiracy against their country.
Confirmation that a bomb brought down the plane — and was presumably smuggled through the Sharm el-Sheikh airport — would represent a devastating blow to the country’s [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/travel/russian-airplane-crash-egypt-tourism.html]tourism industry, and would undermine government claims that the authorities are prevailing in the war against militants based in the Sinai Peninsula.

And from Ben courtesy of Crikey's Planetalking:

Sinai crash bomb confirmation is bad news for airport owners

Ben Sandilands | Nov 17, 2015 10:00PM |
Investigators searching for clues in the debris that was Metrojet flight 9268

Russia’s confirmation that traces of explosive have been found on baggage and debris from the Metrojet A321 that crashed in the Sinai desert is very bad news for privately owned airports as well as airlines.

It also implies dissatisfaction with the Egyptian government’s capacity to tell the truth about the disaster that killed 224 people on 31 October in a full and timely manner.
Egypt should have released the news. It is leading the the accident investigation, and it has an obligation to the safety reporting requirements of ICAO to confirm that security at its popular airport at Sharm el-Sheikh failed to protect an airline and its customers.

The Russian announcement was inevitable after Moscow banned Egyptian carriers from flying to its airports from last Satuday, an announcement overshadowed in news reports by the terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday night.

This report in the Crikey subscriber Insider bulletin eight days ago anticipated the bomb finding and looked at the risks that arise for airport owners world wide as well as travellers in countries targeted by IS.

These are parts of that Insider report:
A genuinely secure and bomb-proof airport is incompatible with the private enterprise idea of lucrative revenue streams from a thriving, cashed-up and semi-captive flow of consumers.
The crush of people who are essential to servicing a profitable airport contribute enormously to their porous nature in terms of workable security.
Everyone — baggage-handler unions and non-union contractors, pilot associations, and the airlines — is fiercely resistant to subjecting staff to the same intensive screening that is supposed to be applied to passengers.
If you’re catching a flight, you cross from “landside” through security to “airside” (via customs, passport control, etc) but once. But if you are staff on any of dozens of services or enterprises, you might have to cross landside/airside/landside many times a day.
And you don’t (unless you are a pilot) generally have to queue, get X-rayed and take off belts, shoes and put computers and keys in separate bins. That would mean your employers were paying you for hours in a shift just to be stuffed around.
Instead you have a special pass, sometimes a special door, and special secure access to the underbelly of an airport. In some jurisdictions, but notably in the United States, poorly paid security personnel have been busted at regular intervals for stealing passenger valuables in the confusion that often occurs when you are parted from computers, watches, wallets, liquids, aerosols and gels, and at times your belt, shoes and even artificial limbs.
In the US, the issue of employee crime is an everyday concern, especially compared to terrorism — the last high-profile terror attempt was the crotch bomber, who set his underpants alight as his plane approached Detroit airport from Amsterdam on Christmas Day in 2009.
But in terrorism hotspots, and Egypt’s Sinai is one of them, the risk of theft is nothing put beside the availability of flights to those who see killing civilians, including those of target nationalities, as the serving the needs of revenge or revolution.
Consider the risks and procedures in this country. The most obvious targets are the terminals themselves. It is blindingly obvious to regular travellers in the major Australian airports, domestic and international, that the availability of thorough and efficient (and well-spaced) security or border checkpoints isn’t being grown at the same pace as increases in travel activity.
In theory a bomb will be detected by molecular sniffers, which aren’t used on all travellers, or seen in your scanned luggage, which is questionable. It won’t be seen if it has been stuffed up your rectum, vagina, or secreted in continence pads for the aged.
Freight that is loaded into the hold of some airliners is problematic, in that the logistics industry and the airports have for years fiercely argued to largely compliant government agencies that the needs of security and commerce “need to be balanced”, which, for fans of Don Watson, means watered down.
There are, of course, only two pathways to be followed on airport security.
One is to do what is “possible”, which is the present approach, which is diluted to an extent by the definition of “possible” being business friendly first, and secure second. It’s common sense, yet it carries risks.
The other is to retain a lower-key theatre of security for its feel-good effects and marginal-risks reduction benefits, and accept that life  doesn’t come gift wrapped and lovely, and that everyone should be alert, go along with the farce, and hope for the best.
Just getting on with it in air travel arguably leads to the same result as draconian security. Atrocities will happen over time, whichever approach to air-transport security is taken.
But the human herds will continue to surge through the airports, and after brief ripples of horror, look the other way when some of us die, and keep on with keeping on.

 
MTF..P2