Heat flash noted on crashed Sinai jet, no missile fire

CAIRO, Nov. 3 (UPI) -- Satellite imagery suggests the Russian aircraft which crashed Saturday in the Sinai Peninsula sustained a heat flash but was not brought down by a missile, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

An infrared surveillance satellite detected a "flash or explosion" in the same vicinity, a senior U.S. defense official said, adding the satellite saw no heat trail of a surface-to-air missile.

"The plane disintegrated at a very high altitude," the official added. "There was an explosion of some kind. There is no evidence a missile of any kind brought down the plane."

A visible heat flash could indicate a bomb aboard the plane, a malfunctioning and exploding engine or a structural problem leading to a fire, among several possibilities. Metrojet Flight 9268, an Airbus A321-200, carried 217 passenger and seven crew members on its way from the Sinai resort Sharm el-Shiekh to St. Petersburg, Russia, when it crashed. There were no survivors, and although a local Islamic State affiliate took responsibility for the crash, officials of several countries dismissed the claim as impossible, since none of the militias on the Sinai Peninsula have the weapons to down the plane from its altitude.

The plane, built in 1997, required repair in 2001 when its tail struck a Cairo landing strip. Officials have confirmed its safety inspections were in order.