– ‘Prove we didn’t’ –
In a new statement Wednesday, IS again insisted it had brought down the plane – and challenged sceptics to prove otherwise.
“Prove that we didn’t bring it down, and how it came down. We will detail how it came down at the time of our choosing,” the group said in an audio statement posted online.
The IS affiliate in Egypt is waging a bloody insurgency in the north of the Sinai Peninsula that has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers.
On Wednesday, it claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing on a police social club in El-Arish, which the official MENA news agency said killed four policemen.
IS has deployed shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles in the past, but they are not known to possess weapons that could bring down an airliner at high altitude.
Egypt has played down the possibility of a bomb attack and stressed the need to wait for the results of an international investigation, keen to preserve the country’s economically vital tourism sector.
British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said an estimated 20,000 Britons currently in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh will be helped to leave.
“There is a significant possibility that the crash was caused by an explosive device on board the aircraft,” he said after an emergency cabinet meeting.
Cameron’s office said he and Sisi had agreed on the need for tight security at Sharm el-Sheikh airport, and British aviation experts have been dispatched to the resort to assess security.
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