Sinai Peninsula

A somber President Vladimir Putin vowed to hunt down and punish those responsible for a bomb that brought down a Russian passenger jet last month, “wherever they are hiding.” Intensified Russian airstrikes Tuesday hit the Islamic State (ISIS) stronghold in Syria that also is being pounded by the French military.

A homemade explosive device brought down a Russian passenger plane over Egypt last month, the head of Russia’s FSB security service said Tuesday.

Flight KGL9268 was only 22 minutes into its journey when it disappeared from radar screens over the Sinai Peninsula, having apparently broken up in mid-air. But with a concrete explanation so far not forthcoming, what do we actually know?

The latest on the crash of a Russian plane in Egypt that killed all 224 people onboard.

The airport at Egypt’s resort of Sharm el-Sheikh has long had gaps in security, including a key baggage scanning device that often is not functioning and lax searches at an entry gate for food and fuel for the planes, security officials at the airport told The Associated Press.

No matter what caused the fatal crash of a Russian airliner in Egypt, the answer will almost certainly hit Russia hard—but not President Vladimir Putin.

Egypt’s foreign minister complained on Saturday that Western governments had not sufficiently helped Egypt in its war on terrorism and had not shared relevant intelligence with Cairo regarding the downed Russian airplane that crashed last week in the Sinai, killing 224 people.

British Prime Minister David Cameron declared Thursday it was “more likely than not” that a bomb brought down a Metrojet flight packed with Russian vacationers—a scenario that Russian and Egyptian officials dismissed as premature speculation.

Evidence suggests a Russian jet that crashed over Egypt’s Sinai desert may have been brought down by a bomb, the British government said Wednesday.

While the cause of the Russian airliner crash in Egypt remains unknown, the incident has re-focused the world’s attention on the Sinai Peninsula.

U.S. satellite imagery detected heat around a Russian passenger jet just before it went down in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, two U.S. officials said Tuesday. But the discovery doesn’t resolve the mystery of why the plane crashed, killing all 224 aboard.

News of any terrible air accident, such the recent crash of a Russian plane in Egypt that killed 224 people, instantly raises questions about aircraft safety and the threat of terrorism.

Investigators are still trying to determine what led to the sudden and catastrophic breakup of a Metrojet plane Saturday over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, just 23 minutes after the Russian-operated jetliner took off from the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Mystery and confusion surrounded the final moments of a Russian jetliner that plummeted suddenly from high altitude to the Egyptian desert, killing all 224 people aboard.

Across Twitter and elsewhere, a video purportedly showing the downing of a plane is being circulated. Some have claimed that it shows ISIS’s downing of Kogalymavia Flight 9268, which crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on Saturday morning.

Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said Saturday that an assault on an army checkpoint in the Sinai Peninsula that killed 30 troops was a “foreign-funded operation” and vowed to take drastic action against militants.