Cairo // Investigators began their examination on Tuesday of the two black boxes from the Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
It came as president Abdel Fattah El Sisi dismissed as “propaganda” the claims by ISIL that it downed Metrojet’s Airbus A321 which crashed on Saturday killing all 224 people on board.
The examination of the black boxes — one which recorded on-board conversations and the other flight data — will be carried out by a joint committee including Egyptian and Russian experts as well as representatives from Ireland, where the plane was registered. It could last several weeks or months if the recordings in the black boxes have been damaged, sources said.
The St Petersburg-bound plane operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia crashed 23 minutes after taking off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh.
Most of the passengers were Russian tourists.
Kogalymavia said the plane crashed due to “external action” and that there was no technical fault or human error. It insisted the aircraft was in an “excellent technical condition”.
Within hours of the crash, the Egyptian affiliate of ISIL based in the Sinai claimed it had downed the jet in retaliation for Russian air strikes targeting fellow extremists in Syria.
“When there is propaganda that it crashed because of ISIL, this is one way to damage the stability and security of Egypt and the image of Egypt,” Mr El Sisi told the BBC.
“Believe me, the situation in Sinai — especially in this limited area — is under our full control.”
The president warned the probe could take years as in the case of Pan-Am flight 103 from London to New York that was brought down by a bomb and crashed into the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988.
On Monday, US director of national intelligence James Clapper said it was “unlikely” that ISIL was involved in the Kogalymavia plane crash but did not rule out the possibility.
Alexander Neradko, head of Russia’s aviation authority, criticised the airline’s comments ruling out technical fault or human error, saying they were “premature and not based on any real facts”.
Experts say the fact that debris and bodies were strewn over a wide area points to a mid-air disintegration of the aircraft unlike most air crashes.
They said that left two possibilities — a technical fault that caused the plane to disintegrate, or an explosion caused by a bomb smuggled on board.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has described the crash — Russia’s worst air disaster — as a “huge tragedy”.
On Tuesday, the first 10 bodies of victims in the crash were identified by their families.
Alexei Smirnov of the Russian emergency situations ministry said that a total of 140 bodies and more than 100 body parts were delivered to St Petersburg on two government planes on Monday and Tuesday and that a third plane is expected to bring more remains later on Tuesday.
* Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
