Metrojet Flight 9268 was an international chartered passenger flight, operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia . On 31 October 2015 at 06:13 local time EST , an Airbus A321-231 operating the flight was destroyed by a bomb above the northern Sinai following its departure from Sharm El Sheikh International Airport, Egypt, en route to Pulkovo Airport, Saint Petersburg, Russia. All 224 passengers and crew who were on board were killed. The cause of the crash was most likely an onboard explosive device as concluded by Russian investigators.Of the 224 on board the flight, mostly tourists, there were 212 Russians, four Ukrainians, and one Belarusian passenger. There were also 7 crew members on board. Investigators believe the possibility that a bomb put in the aircraft at Sharm El Sheikh was to lead several countries to suspend flights to that airport. With its death toll of 224 people, Flight 9268 is the deadliest air disaster both in the history of Russian aviation and within Egyptian territory. It is also the deadliest air disaster involving an airbus A321, as well as the deadliest involving an aircraft from the Airbus A320 family, and the deadliest aviation disaster of 2015.Shortly after the crash, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant 's Sinai Branch, previously known as Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, claimed responsibility for the incident, which occurred in the vicinity of the Sinai insurgency. ISIL claimed responsibility on Twitter, on video, and in a statement by Abu Osama al-Masri, the leader of the group's Sinai branch. ISIL posted pictures of what it said was the bomb in Dabiq, its online magazine.By 4 November 2015, British and American authorities suspected that a bomb was responsible for the crash. On 8 November 2015, an anonymous member of the Egyptian investigation team said the investigators were 90 percent sure that the jet was brought down by a bomb. Lead investigator Ayman al-Muqaddam said that other possible causes of the crash included a fuel explosion, metal fatigue, and lithium batteries overheating. The Russian Federal Security Service announced on 17 November that they were sure that it was a terrorist attack, caused by an improvised bomb containing the equivalent of up to 1 kilogram of TNT that detonated during the flight. The Russians said they had found explosive residue as evidence. On 24 February 2016, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi acknowledged that terrorism caused the crash.
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