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debka.com says Russian airliner with 224 people aboard believed shot down by missile over central Sinai
Russian airliner with 224 people aboard believed shot down by missile over central Sinai
A Russian civilian plane with 217 passengers and 7
crew aboard crashed, and is believed shot down by a missile, over
Sinai over Sinai early Saturday morning, Oct. 31, shortly after taking
off from the Sinai resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh for St. Petersburg.
Initial reporting on the fate of the plane was confused and is still not
completely clear. It was first reported to be missing after contact was
lost with Egyptian air control; it was then said to be safely on its
way to Russia over Turkey. Russian aviation sources then reported the
A321 to be missing over Cypriot air space. Finally, the Egyptian prime
minister’s office Egyptian prime minister’s office confirmed that a
Russian passenger plane had crashed n central Sinai and a cabinet level
crisis committee had been formed to deal with the crash.
The airliner owned by the small airline Kogalymavia disappeared from
screen 23 minutes after takeoff from Sharm el-Sheikh. There were many
families with children aboard.
debkafile
reports: The first claim by Russian aviation sources that the plane had
gone missing over Cyprus was an attempt to draw attention from the
likelihood that it was shot down over Sinai, where the former Ansar
al-Miqdas, which has renamed itself ISIS-Sinai, maintains its main
strongholds.
Moscow is reluctant to admit that the Islamic State may have chosen to
retaliate for the buildup of Russian forces in Syria and Russia ari
strikes on its bases in Syria.
If the airline was indeed shot down by the Sinai branch of the Islamic
State, the Russians are finding that ISIS is fully capable of
striking at the least expected place and most vulnerable spot of its
enemy.
On board the plane were 17 children, along with 200 adults and seven
crew, said aviation authorities. There are no signs of survivors.
Confirming the deliberate attempt at confusion, Moscow and Cairo both
stated that the plane had disappeared from the radar 23 minutes after
takeoff from Sharm El-Sheikh.
This is refuted by the discovery of the wreckage, a few minutes ago,
completely gutted and destroyed, and a short distance away near Bir
Al-Hassaneh, in the central Sinai Jabal al-Halal mountain range, where
Ansar Beit al-Miqdas terrorists are holed up and which is almost
inaccessible to rescue teams.
It is to this stronghold that debkafile
reported in recent months that ISIS sent officers, former senior
members of Saddam Hussein’s army, to set up a major campaign against the
Egyptian army, along with advanced anti-air missile systems smuggled
into Sinai and the Gaza Strip from Libya for this campaign.
Israel air force jets no longer carry out low flights in the areas within range of the Islamic groups armed with these missiles.
Updating:
In another attempt to disguise the cause of the disaster, Russian and
Egyptian officials now say that the pilot of the Russian plane reported
a technical fault after takeoff and asked to be rerouted to Cairo or
El-Arish. Russian and Egyptian officials have meanwhile announced they
are forming commissions of inquiry to investigate the cause of the
tragedy. Official condolences were relayed to the waiting families the
airport.
The Sinai branch of the Islamic State has developed a highly competent intelligence-gathering network, debkafile’s
sources report, operated by local Bedouin tribesmen who track the
slightest movements in the Peninsula. The Egyptian army and the American
troops serving at the big the Multinational Force base there are fully
aware of the round-the-clock surveillance maintained by the terrorists
at Egyptian resorts, using staff at hotels, restaurants and the local
airfield as inside informers.
Ansar has never yet harmed the tourist traffic in Sinai. But once
ISIS decided to use it to hit back at Russia’s intensified military
intervention in the Syrian conflict, the Islamists would not have found
it hard to find out when the Russian airliner was due to take off from
the Red Sea resort, chart its route north along the western coast of the
Gulf of Aqaba up to Dahab and then turn west towards central Sinai and
head for the Mediterranean. All the terrorists had to do was to lay a
missile ambush for the plane from the Jabal Halal eminence of 876 meters
(2,865 ft).
Had the crash been the result of a technical fault, as Moscow and
Cairo claim, it would not have been so completely gutted but broken up
into large fragments. The total destruction could only have been caused b
y an explosion either inside the A321 or a direct missile hit.
,
Source: http://blogdogcicle.blogspot.com/2015/10/debkacom-says-russian-airliner-with-224.html
