Foreign minister also criticises failure to share intelligence on crash as restrictions threaten to cripple tourism industry
The Egyptian government has refused to concede that terrorists brought down a Russian passenger jet in the Sinai desert last week, despite the US and the UK saying that intelligence points strongly to the crash being caused by a bomb.
Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, pushed back against international suspicions that the tragedy was an act of terrorism, as intensifying restrictions on air travel threatened to cripple the country’s vital tourism industry.
“We have not dismissed any possibility but there is no hypothesis yet, before the investigations are over and a full report is ready,” Shoukry said on Saturday.
His comments came after several countries decided to block flights to the popular Red Sea resort.
Shoukry said foreign intelligence that had triggered the international travel restrictions had not been shared with Egypt. “We expected that any technical information should have been shared with us, at a technical level, before publicising it in the media,” he said.
Security officials said, however, that they had launched an investigation into local staff and ground crew in Sharm el-Sheikh who had come into contact with the MetroJet Airbus A321 before it crashed 23 minutes after takeoff, killing all 224 people on board.
Egyptian authorities are checking cameras at the resort’s airport for any suspicious activity related to the crash, security officials told Reuters
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/07/egypt-plane-crash-intelligence-has-not-been-shared-with-us-cairo-says
