UK officials say
The Russian plane that went down in Egypt’s volatile Sinai Peninsula on Saturday “may well have been brought down by an explosive device,” the UK Prime Minister’s Office announced Wednesday.
A spokesman said British investigators were headed to Egypt's Sharm el-Sheikh Airport to analyze the security there, and delayed all flights to the UK from that airport "as a precautionary measure."
The statement from 10 Downing Street marks one of the most overt suggestions from a foreign government that a bomb may have brought down the jet.
If a bomb were involved in the crash, it’s highly unlikely the explosive came in contact with a U.S. carrier because they are not permitted to fly out of Sharm el-Sheikh Airport, White House Press Secretary told reporters during a Wednesday press conference. There are also no direct flights from the airport to the U.S.
Terrorism has not been ruled out as a cause for the crash, a U.S. official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told Fox News. The flight’s passenger manifest is being run through watch lists and terror databases in the U.S. to identify suspect individuals, Fox News confirms.
Cockpit recordings from the plane revealed unusual sounds the moment it went off the radar, Russian media reports say.
An unnamed source told Russian news agency Interfax that “sounds uncharacteristic of routine flight were recorded preceding the moment that the aircraft disappeared from radar screens,” according to The Guardian.
The news agency said it had viewed a transcript of the cockpit recordings recovered from black boxes being examined by Egyptian officials. The crash killed all 224 people on board.
The source said a situation had developed on the plane “suddenly and unexpectedly.” Investigators have yet to release a report on the crash and pilots spoke to air traffic controllers in a routine exchange four minutes before the plane went down, The Guardian reports.
Families so far have identified the bodies of 33 victims killed in the crash, Igor Albin, deputy governor of St. Petersburg, told The Associated Press. Most of them were vacationing from Russia's St. Petersburg.
Emergency Situations Minister Vladimir Puchkov said Wednesday that rescue teams in Egypt have expanded the search area to 15 square miles.
Russian officials have refrained from announcing the cause of the crash, citing the ongoing investigation.
ISIS has released a second claim of responsibility for the downing of the Russian jet, but intelligence officials have rejected those claims as propaganda.
FoxNews.com’s Catherine Herridge and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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