The UK, US and others failed to respond to Egypt’s calls for greater coordination to fight terrorism and have not shared intelligence with Cairo about the crash of a Russian passenger plane last week, the country’s foreign minister has claimed.
Sameh Shoukry made the intervention in Saturday after several countries, including Russia, decided to block flights to the popular holiday resort of Sharm el-Sheikh after a Metrojet plane crashed in Sinai, killing all 224 people on board.
He said an investigation was under way to find the cause of the crash, but stopped short of confirming the UK’s belief that a bomb was used to deliberately bring down the Airbus A321. A group affiliated to the Islamic State, which is known to operate in the Sinai peninsular near to where the plane crashed, claimed responsibility for the crash last Saturday.
David Cameron has said UK intelligence services have gathered information suggesting an explosive device was used to blow up the plane midflight, and has therefore grounded all British planes bound for the region.
Shoukry said: “The information we have heard about has not been shared with Egyptian security agencies in detail. We were expecting that the technical information would be provided to us.”
No comments:
Post a Comment