18 November 2015•Update: 19 November 2015
CAIRO
The Daesh militant group has released a photo online suggesting that a Russian passenger plane that crashed in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Oct. 31 was brought down by a bomb planted by one of its members.
On Wednesday, the photo -- an image of a soft drink can presumably packed with explosives -- appeared on "Dabiq", the group's online propaganda magazine.
Under the photo, a caption reads: "Image of IED [improvised explosive device] used to bring down the Russian airliner".
The website goes on to claim that the bomb had been smuggled onto the ill-fated airplane, "leading to the deaths of 219 Russians and five other crusaders only a month after Russia's thoughtless decision".
The "thoughtless decision" presumably refers to an ongoing campaign of Russian airstrikes against Daesh positions in Syria, which Moscow began carrying out on Sept. 30.
The passenger plane went down on Oct. 31, killing all 224 people on board, shortly after taking off from the Egyptian Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Shortly afterward, a Daesh-linked group in the Sinai Peninsula had claimed responsibility -- without producing any evidence -- for downing the plane, which it said had come in retaliation for Russian military intervention in Syria.
Security loophole
In its online magazine, Daesh said Wednesday that it had initially decided to bring down a plane "belonging to a nation in the western, U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State" -- the name used by the group to describe itself.
The target, however, was later changed to a Russian plane, the group said, after a loophole in security was discovered at Sharm el-Sheikh airport.
"Daqib" magazine went on to assert that it had images of the passports of a number of those killed in last month’s plane crash.
On Tuesday, the Russian authorities announced that traces of explosives had been found in the plane wreckage and vowed to hunt down the perpetrators.
Egypt, for its part, says investigations into the causes of the crash are still underway, declining until now to confirm or deny whether the plane had been brought down by a bomb.
