The black box recorder of the doomed Russian passenger plane that crashed on its way back from Egypt’s Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh last week killing all 224 people on board reportedly reveals a loud explosion heard on the jet before it went down.

Sky News, citing a report from French television channel France 2, reported Saturday that the black boxes from the doomed airliner “distinctly show the sound of an explosion during the flight.”

The report of an explosion comes after British and American officials revealed that it was possible a bomb on board had brought the plane down. Russian officials responded Friday agreeing to suspend all Russian flights to Egypt.

The suspension, covering all of Egypt, is even more sweeping than the one previously imposed by Britain, which had halted flights to Sharm el-Sheikh only.

"I think it will be reasonable to suspend all Russian flights to Egypt until we determine the real reasons of what happened," intelligence chief Alexander Bortnikov said in televised comments. "It concerns tourist flights most of all."


A U.S. government source with the intelligence reaffirmed to Fox News the possibility of a “high end” device planed on the aircraft. A separate source said the “crash signature,” included the flash picked up by military intelligence, and the scope of the debris field were in keeping with a bomb.

While no firm conclusions about the cause of the crash have been made, and a catastrophic failure has not been ruled out, the Homeland Security department confirmed that increased screening at foreign airports with flights coming into the U.S. reflected the freshest information.

"We're mindful of new information, want to make sure we communicate as much as possible about information the US government has learned and be sure national security officials are taking steps to protect the American people," White House spokesman Josh Earnest explained, while emphasizing the new measures are not permanent.

There are currently 45,000 Russian tourists on vacation in Egypt, Russian news agency TASS reported, according to the Telegraph. Around 20,000 British tourists remain stranded in Sharm el-Sheikh. Rescuing tourists out of Egypt have come increasingly difficult as Egyptian authorities diverted multiple flights without reason.

Last-minute changes forced 21 of the 29 scheduled services to change course of action, according to Sky News.

The BBC reported Friday that officials in London have not completely ruled out the possibility that the Metrojet 9268 crashed due to a technical fault. However, they now view such a scenario as highly unlikely.

Sky News reported that British intelligence operatives uncovered chatter Wednesday during a review of intercepted conversations following the Oct. 31 disaster that suggested a plot to bomb a passenger plane in the region. The Daily Telegraph reported that the conversations involved Islamist militants known to U.S. and British intelligence, while the Times of London reported that the tone and content of the intercepted conversations between militants in Syria and Sinai convinced officials that the bomb had been carried on board by a passenger or member of the airport's ground staff.

The Telegraph also reported that investigators are focusing on the possibility that a baggage handler at the Sharm el-Sheikh airport smuggled the bomb onto the doomed Airbus A321-200.

Egypt and Russia have repeatedly dismissed suggestions by the U.S. and Britain that a terror attack brought down the flight. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi Thursday said that British officials had sent a security team to evaluate the Sharm el-Sheikh airport 10 months ago and were satisfied with the results.

"They checked the security actions, they were happy with that," he told reporters at 10 Downing Street through an interpreter. However, the Telegraph reported that the British team had urged the Egyptians to carry out more background checks on tarmac baggage handlers and add more scanners. It is unclear if the recommendations were carried out.

The Sinai Peninsula has been described as a “No Man’s Land,” where temperatures vary from freezing temperatures to 122 degrees. A veteran Egyptian journalist says there is no lack of recruitment opportunities for the terrorist group that is the fastest growing ISIS affiliate.

It is "much easier for Ansar Beit-al Maqdis to recruit bedouin young people from Sinai to become jihadists since their humanity was totally neglected by the Egyptian government..."Mohammed Gohar said "Some may be in the tourism business and working as hotel workers of Sharm el Sheikh."

Their latest name is "Sinai Province" but are also known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdi (ABM). After Egypt's Hosni Mubarek was overthrown from power in 2011, they targeted the Egyptian military and drove security forces away from the region which has longed been used by smugglers and traffickers.

The group’s leadership is known to move around in groups of 5 to 10 people, and Gohar said the suspicion is that the group deliberately targeted the Russian plane on the one year anniversary of the one year anniversary of their sworn oath to align themselves with ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/11/07/explosion-reportedly-heard-on-black-box-doomed-russian-passenger-plane/?intcmp=hpbt2

It will be interesting to see how Putin handles this. He's not a strategist, hell he is referred to as a lackey, a secretary on his time in the KGB. He is a psychopath though, so it could get interesting........

Every time I read about this it makes me think about Arrow Air Flight 1285 from the same part of Egypt that went down at Gander.......

Let John McShame and Miss Lindsey Grahams "moderate" rebels we spent 1/2 a Billion dollars arming and training to fight ISIS go in there and help!

OH Wait! That's right. There weren't any! Zero, zip, nada! Just a bunch of arms given to Al Qaeda and ISIL.....

Never mind......

I don't know how much of the wreckage the Brits have examined but the news yesterday was that the damage points to a large bomb hidden in the rearmost unpressurized cargo compartment that pretty much took the tail off when it blew.

As long as I'm able to remember
09/01/83, Korean Airlines, flight 007,
a civilian aircraft (Boeing 747), carrying 269 civilian passengers.

Shot down, over international waters, by Soviet mig fighter jets.

There were NO survivors.

Russians, can expect NO sympathy from me, when they lose a "civilian" aircraft.

They're reapin' what they've sewn.

They said they heard an explosion on the black box.

If you know where the explosion happened you can compare the volume of the sound blast to get a measurement of the size of the explosion. Apparently the blast was large.

Thinking they might find one body more than the manifest. Maybe a suicide bomber crawled into the cargo hold with a dead man's switch on the device.

He holds a detonator circuit 'open' by pushing and holding a button. When he reaches altitude and passes out from lack of oxygen, the button is released, the circuit completed, and instant detonation.

Could also have been a bag slipped into the system after the passengers bags had already been cleared, via the internal baggage handling/clearing process.

Since cargo containers were supposed to be more bomb 'resistant' than in the past, one would think this would need to be a slightly larger charge than one assumes would be used.

Since the plane was only on the ground for an hour, it greatly reduces the list of suspects. Hopefully there were security cameras trained on the loading area to see how the bomb gets on board.

I don't see Egypt putting to much into the investigation. Both Egypt's President and Russia have said that it wasn't a bomb or terrorism.

It's got to be embarrassing for Putin that the USA and UK have basically completed and investigation and figured out what happened and Russia is still clueless

doubt the Russians are clueless to what the Cause of the Crash is,they just ain't telling!

While the investigation into the crash of the Russian Metrojet A321 on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula is ongoing, the self-proclaimed Islamic State terrorist group claimed responsibility for the incident. On Monday, Egyptian authorities said they eliminated the leader of the IS cell based in the region.

Ashraf Ali al-Gharably was the leader of the Ansar Bait al-Maqdis group, which recently pledged allegiance to IS and rebranded itself as the Sinai Province of the Islamic State.

On Monday, Cairo police say Gharably was killed in a firefight while resisting arrest.

"He sensed their presence and shot at them in an attempt to flee, requiring the police forces to exchange fire with him leading to his death," the Egyptian Interior ministry said in a statement, according to Agence France-Presse.

According to that statement, Gharably led the IS affiliate in the Central Military Region (CMR) and the Bahariya Oasis, and that he was planning a major attack in the greater Cairo area.

The militant leader was also believed to have been behind a number of high-profile attacks already conducted. Egyptian authorities suspected him of being behind the assassination of a former interior minister, Mohamed Al-Saied, in 2013, as well as the bombing of the Italian consulate last summer.

More recently, the Sinai IS affiliate claimed responsibility for the downing of Metrojet Flight 9268 on October 31, which left 224 people dead. Those claims have yet to be verified by the official investigation.

Egypt is currently leading the investigation into the Metrojet crash. While the precise cause is not yet known, authorities are considering the possibilities that an aircraft malfunction or terrorist bomb could be the culprit.

Both Egyptian and Russian authorities have warned against speculation until all facts are known.

"A terrorist act, remains, of course, a possible reason for what happened," Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told Rossiyskaya Gazeta on Monday.

"I already said today, during a meeting with deputy prime ministers, that we should [not] indulge in illusions. These issues, related to security, cannot be solved very quickly. Therefore, it is likely that this will take a rather long time. The tourist flows will be formed based on this."

Based largely on intercepted "chatter," US and UK officials have said there are strong indications that terrorism was behind the crash.
Earlier on Monday, British newspaper the Sunday Times claimed to have identified the individual who claimed responsibility for the downing the A321. The paper named Abu Osama al-Masri, an Egyptian cleric who is part of the Sinai IS affiliate, as the one to initially challenge Egyptian authorities to "prove we did not" down the plane.

Investigators are currently awaiting the results of forensic tests looking for traces of explosives at the crash site. Those results could take approximately two weeks to complete.

respect for Egypt, taking care of business...