Cairo/Moscow: Egypt’s Civil Aviation Minister Hossam Kamal on Thursday said all Egyptian airports were tightly secured and there was no evidence that the airliner was downed by a bomb.
“All Egyptian airports undergo periodical examinations by the Egyptian civil aviation authority and international inspection authorities,” MENA news agency quoted Kamal as saying.
The minister’s comments came after Britain said a Russian passenger plane “may well have been brought down by an explosive device” aboard.
According information, Kamal said investigations were still going on and that there was no evidence that “confirms this hypothesis”.
The Russian plane, bound for St. Petersburg, crashed on Saturday about 23 minutes after taking off from Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all the 224 passengers and crew members, mostly Russians, onboard.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said none of the assumptions related to the crash of the Russian plane over Sinai Peninsula could be confirmed yet as the investigation was ongoing,
“Only the investigation may put forward some theories of the accident. We haven’t had any statements from the investigation so far,” Peskov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
Peskov was responding to British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, who said there existed “a significant possibility that the crash was caused by an explosive device on board the aircraft”.
IANS