Investigators yesterday began their examination of the two black boxes from the Russian airline that crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, as Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi said the probe would take time.
Al-Sisi described a claim by the Egyptian branch of the Islamic State (IS) group that it downed the Airbus A321 that crashed on Saturday killing all 224 people on board as “propaganda.”
The examination of the black boxes — one which recorded on-board conversations and the other flight data — started at about midday, an Egyptian civil aviation ministry official said.
Photo: AFP
The probe could last several weeks or months if the recordings in the black boxes have been damaged, sources said. Russia’s government commission overseeing the investigation was also due to meet yesterday.
The St Petersburg-bound plane operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia crashed 23 minutes after taking off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Most of the passengers were Russian tourists.
Kogalymavia said the plane crashed due to “external action,” and that there was no technical fault or human error. It insisted the aircraft was in “excellent technical condition.”
Within hours of the crash, the Egyptian affiliate of Islamic State based in the Sinai claimed it had downed the jet in retaliation for Russian airstrikes targeting fellow jihadists in Syria.
“When there is propaganda that it crashed because of ISIS, this is one way to damage the stability and security of Egypt and the image of Egypt,” al-Sisi told the BBC, using an alternative acronym for IS.
“The plane was at 35,000 feet [10,668m] altitude. Believe me, the situation in Sinai — especially in this limited area — is under our full control,” he said.
Al-Sisi said the probe could take years as in the case of Pan-Am Flight 103 from London to New York that was brought down by a bomb and crashed into the Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
“It takes time to clarify the incidents. You had the Pan-American that crashed over Europe. It took years before you reached the truth about the real reasons why it crashed,” he said.
On Monday, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said it was “unlikely” that IS was involved in the Kogalymavia plane crash, but did not rule out the possibility.
Alexander Neradko, head of Russia’s aviation authority, criticized the airline’s comments ruling out technical fault or human error, saying they were “premature and not based on any real facts.”
Cairo, Moscow and Washington have downplayed the IS claim, although analysts have not ruled out that a bomb might have been planted on board.
Experts said the fact that debris and bodies were strewn over a wide area points to a mid-air disintegration of the aircraft unlike most air crashes.
They said that left two possibilities — a technical fault that caused the plane to disintegrate, or an explosion caused by a bomb smuggled on board.
Search operations have been extended to a radius of 40km.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the crash — the nation’s worst air disaster — as a “huge tragedy.”
“Without any doubt everything must be done to create an objective picture of events so that we know what happened and can react accordingly,” he said.
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