Group suspected in Russian jet crash risks exposing ISIS allies to backlash
CAIRO — Within months of the military takeover here two years ago, a little-known group calling itself Ansar Beit alMaqdis managed to penetrate rings of checkpoints and heavy security to carry out a string of startling attacks.
They were inside jobs. Now the same group, operating as the Sinai Province of the Islamic State, is the prime suspect in yet another inside job: British and U.S. officials say they believe it increasingly likely that the group planted a bomb on the Russian charter jet that exploded last week in midair over the desert north of Sharm elSheikh, Egypt, killing all 224 people aboard.
No government has confirmed that Sinai Province has taken responsibility. But the group has eagerly claimed it, and others in the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, have celebrated — positions that reflect drastic changes in both the Islamic State and Sinai Province since the Egyptian unit first pledged its allegiance one year ago.
If its role in bringing down the plane is confirmed, Sinai Province may have even momentarily surprised and surpassed its vicious parent, and, some analysts said, risked a broad backlash against the Islamic State itself.
If the militants in the Sinai found an inside man who could help bring down a Russia-bound jet, “did the ISIS guys in Syria say, ‘Sure, why not? The more enemies the merrier?’” asked William McCants, a researcher at the Brookings Institution and the author of “The ISIS Apocalypse,” a study of the group. “Or are they just celebrating it after the fact, so they don’t look out of the loop on such a major attack?”
No group acting in the Islamic State’s name has ever bombed a civilian airplane, the archetypical terrorist attack of an earlier era.
“This brings to reality our worst fears,” said Mokhtar Awad, a researcher at the Center for American Progress who tracks the Egyptian militants, “that this group that has the most territory and the most resources and the most power in jihadist history is now a launching pad for terrorist attacks.”