The Russian intelligence service (the FSB) have confirmed that the Metrojet airliner that crashed in the Sinai peninsular in October was brought down by a bomb. The plane had been traveling from Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt to St Petersburg in Russia.
On Tuesday the FSB announced that traces of explosives had been found among the aircraft debris, the announcement ends weeks of speculation about what had brought the plane down causing the crash.
Before the revelations, the Kremlin had been playing down assertiuons from Western countries that the crash had been caused by terrorisits, urging for people to wait until the investigation had run its course and the real cause had been found.
Sputnik, the state owned news website, quoted the FSB’s chief Alexander Bortnikov saying that the plane had been brought down intentionally.
Bortnikov reportedly said ‘We can defiantely say this was a terrorist attack,’ before going onto explain that about 1kg of a TNT like explosive was used to bring down the flight mid air, which was why the plane debris was spread over a large distance.
#A321 jet crash in #Sinai was terrorist act – #Putin (VIDEO) https://t.co/VwRB7jr1jl pic.twitter.com/yoE9qDgB6j
— RT (@RT_com) November 17, 2015
President Putin responded by calling the incident one of the bloodiest acts in modern Russian history and ordered the Russian air force to intensify the airstrikes against ISIL in Syria.
