Russia suspends flights to Egypt

MOSCOW — In an abrupt turnaround, Russia on Friday suspended all passenger flights to Egypt after days of resisting U.S. and British suggestions that a bomb may have brought down a Russian plane in the Sinai Peninsula a week ago.

The move dealt a sharp blow to both countries’ tourism sectors amid fears about security in Egypt.

Russia’s federal aviation agency said airlines would be allowed to send empty planes to bring home travelers, but it was unclear when the Russians in Egypt, estimated to number at least 40,000, would be able to return home as planned from the Red Sea resorts including Sharm el-Sheikh.

Within hours of the Oct. 31 crash of the Metrojet Airbus 321-200 that killed all 224 aboard — mostly Russians — a faction of the Is-

lamic State militant group claimed to have downed it in retaliation for Moscow’s airstrikes that began a month earlier against fighters in Syria. The claim was initially dismissed on the grounds that the IS affiliate in Egypt’s troubled Sinai region didn’t have missiles capable of hitting high-flying planes.

British and U.S. officials, guided primarily by intelligence intercepts and satellite imagery, suggested a bomb might have been aboard the aircraft. The Russians and Egyptians called that premature, saying the investigation had not concluded.

France 2 TV, citing an investigator who had access to one of the Metrojet plane’s flight recorders, reported that “the sound of an explosion can be distinctly heard during the flight.” France’s BEA accident investigation agency said it could not confirm the report.

As the suspicions grew, Russia appeared unwilling to countenance the possibility, and Egyptian officials played down terrorism as a cause of the crash, with President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi calling the IS claim “propaganda” designed to embarrass his government.

But on Friday, the head of Russian intelligence, Alexander Bortnikov, recommended a suspension of all flights to Egypt “until we determine the real reasons of what happened,” and President Vladimir Putin quickly agreed.

While Russia still underlined that no conclusion had been reached about the cause of the Metrojet crash, it joined Britain in demanding stricter security at Egyptian airports.

Egypt maintains there is nothing wrong with the Sharm el-Sheikh airport, the main entry to Sinai beach resorts.

But a former senior official in Egypt’s Tourism Ministry, Magdy Salim, said “airport security procedures in Egypt are almost (all) bad” and marred by “insufficiencies.”

Salim said searches are sometimes lax, adding: “We understand why people are scared.”