Russian plane crash: Bomb may have downed airliner, US and UK say

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Intelligence suggests the Russian plane that crashed in Egypt killing all 224 people on board may have been brought down by a bomb, US and UK officials say.
But they say they have yet to reach a formal conclusion.
Britain earlier suspended flights to and from the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, from where the flight had departed.
Egypt has dismissed claims by militants linked to Islamic State (IS) that they brought down the plane.
Russian experts say it is too early to say.
Separately on Wednesday, Egyptian officials said the cockpit voice recorder of the Metrojet Airbus 321 was badly damaged in the crash.
However, they managed to extract information from the flight data recorder which is ready to be analysed by investigators, Egypt’s Civil Aviation Minister Mohamed Hossam Kamal said.
The plane, bound for St Petersburg, crashed in Egypt’s Sinai desert just 23 minutes after take-off from Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday.
Most of those on board the plane, which was operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia, were Russian.
UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said the government had looked at all the information available, including the claim by IS, and concluded that there was a “significant possibility” the plane had been brought down.
Mr Hammond said there would be no British flights out of Sharm el-Sheikh on Thursday, but airlines expected to start flying home some of the thousands of Britons currently at the resort on Friday.
“We’re spending today with the airlines, with the Egyptian authorities, putting in place short-term emergency measures that will allow us to screen everything going onto those planes, double-check those planes, so that we can be confident that they can fly back safely to the UK,” he told the BBC.
The move to suspend flights came during a visit to Britain by Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi and Mr Hammond has stressed that the decision was made “very reluctantly”, adding: “We have to put the safety and security of British nationals above all other considerations.”
bbc.com/