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ISIL group said Wednesday it had smuggled a bomb on board a Russian airliner that went down last month, after discovering a "way to compromise the security" at an Egyptian airport.
The ISIL claim, published in the group's magazine, came a day after Moscow announced that traces of explosives had been found in the plane wreckage and vowed to hunt down the perpetrators.
The attack on October 31 -- the deadliest against a Russian target since the Beslan school massacre in 2004 -- killed all 224 people on board the plane as it flew over Sinai en route to Saint Petersburg.
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi agreed "close cooperation" between their security services, the Kremlin said.
In its online magazine Dabiq, ISIL published what it said was a picture of the explosive, apparently contained in a soda can, and a purported picture it said its fighters had obtained of passports belonging to dead passengers.
The magazine said ISIL had initially planned to down a plane belonging to a country from the US-led coalition targeting militants in Iraq and Syria.
The militants decided to instead target the Russian plane departing the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh after Moscow began an air campaign in Syria in late September, said the English-language publication.
"After having discovered a way to compromise the security at the Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport and resolving to bring down a plane belonging to a nation in the American-led Western coalition against ISIL, the target was changed to a Russian plane," it said.
"A bomb was smuggled onto the airplane."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian authorities had seen the picture that appeared in the magazine in the mass media and were investigating.
Egypt says a team probing the disaster has yet to find the cause.
Source: AFP
| 18-11-2015 - 21:24 Last updated 18-11-2015 - 21:24 |
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