Terror Monitor, an online terrorist monitoring organization, claims to have a statement from ISIS claiming responsibility for the attack.
The unverified statement, written in Arabic, says the flight crash was not a technical fault, as reported by security sources.
A Russian plane carrying over 220 people from Egypt to Russia disappeared from radars, and crashed in central Sinai, according to Russian and Egyptian authorities.
Kolavia Flight 7K9268, an Airbus A321, went off radar 23 minutes after taking off from Sharm El-Sheikh International Airport, Sergey Izvolskiy told the media citing preliminary data.
The plane was carrying 217 passengers and 7 crewmembers, he added. Seventeen of the passengers were children.
The Russian embassy in Egypt initially said all on board were Russian citizens. Later, the Belorussian embassy said one of the passengers was Belorussian. Egyptian authorities said three of the victims were Ukrainian, but Kiev didn’t immediately confirm that.
Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail confirmed that the Russian plane did go missing over Sinai and said a cabinet-level crisis committee has been convened to deal with the incident.
The crash site was discovered hours later in a desolate mountainous area of central Sinai, Egypt’s aviation ministry reported.
The plane was destroyed and all passengers and crewmembers were killed in the crash, Egyptian military and rescue officials told AP. Earlier, media reports suggested there might have been some survivors.
The plane climbed to its designated altitude of over 10,000 meters before rapidly losing speed, dropping and then vanishing from radar. Some reports in the Egyptian media cited eyewitnesses as saying the plane was on fire as it fell.
A source at Sharm El-Sheikh Airport told RIA Novosti the pilot of the missing plane requested a change of course, saying the jet would have to land in Cairo. The source said the crew of the crashed plane had complained to the airport’s technical service that the jet had engine problems.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to form a commission on Kolavia’s plane crash in Egypt, the Kremlin press service reported on Saturday.
Putin has expressed his deepest condolences to the families of the victims of the plane crash.
He also has ordered Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov to urgently send to Egypt rescue planes to assist at the Kolavia’s plane crash site, the Kremlin press service said.
