Investigators try to establish cause of crash - latest reportMost passengers reportedly Russian17 children among more than 200 on board
4.30pm GMTWe’re wrapping up our live coverage of the plane crash. Here’s what we know:
Related: Russian plane crash: investigation begins into cause of A321 crash 4.14pm GMTMokhtar Awad,an analyst with the middle for American Progress, tells the Guardian that the Islamic State’s claim of responsibility is quite indistinct.
“It doesn’t state how they were able to ‘down’ the plane allegedly. Even the most sophisticated of portable surface-to-air missiles cannot reach that high an altitude and are only a threat during periods of prefer-off or landing, or but the plane had already climbed to its target altitude (from what we know thus far) when it began to likely experience technical failures.
The local affiliate,Wilayat Sinai, has been under some pressure over the past few months and may hold jumped the gun on taking credit. Although there isn’t a precedent for such a spectacular lie about something they claim to hold done, and Islamic State itself has recently been embellishing increasingly. For instance it claimed that the recent prison raid by Kurdish and US special forces were a total failure,when in fact video evidence surfaced showed them freeing the hostages. So this may be an instance of the rooster taking credit for the dawn.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com