UK claims bomb brought down jet

LONDON -- 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.

Cameron said he had grounded all British flights to and from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula because of "intelligence and information" indicating that a bomb was the likely culprit in the crash Saturday that killed all 224 people onboard. The move stranded thousands of British tourists at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Cameron said he had "every sympathy" with the Egyptians, who rely heavily on tourism, but added he had to "put the safety of British people first."

The radical Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for bringing down the plane in the Sinai, a claim rejected by Russian and Egyptian officials as not credible. Egypt is, however, fighting an Islamic insurgency in the area where the plane crashed and Russia is supporting the Syrian government with airstrikes against IS targets.

"We don't know for certain that it was a terrorist bomb ... (but it's a) strong possibility," Cameron said at his London office at 10 Downing St. shortly before a previously scheduled meeting with Egypt's president. "There's still an investigation taking place in Egypt. We need to see the results of that investigation."

Later, Cameron and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about the crash in a phone call. The Kremlin said Putin told the British leader it's necessary to rely on data yielded by the official crash probe while assessing the reason for the crash. The two men discussed the joint fight against terror.

A British team was in Egypt working with officials to tighten security at the Sharm el-Sheikh airport so the British flights could resume. Cameron said "we want to start as soon as possible" to bring tourists home, and empty planes would be flying out from Britain to do that, but the process would take some time.

After meeting with Cameron, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said British officials had sent a security team to check Sharm el-Sheikh airport 10 months ago and were satisfied with the results.

"They checked the security actions, they were happy with that," he told a news conference, speaking through an interpreter. Egypt stands "completely ready to cooperate with all of our friends" to ensure the safety of foreign tourists.

Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, insisted that investigators were working on all possible theories as to why the Airbus A321-200 crashed Saturday in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula just 23 minutes after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh. He said naming just one possibility was mere speculation.

"One cannot rule out a single theory, but at this point there are no reasons to voice just one theory as reliable - only investigators can do that," Peskov told reporters in Moscow.

Germany's Lufthansa Group, however, announced it, too, would cancel flights of its subsidiary airlines - Edelweiss and Eurowings - to Sharm el-Sheikh. Flights to Cairo would not be affected, the company said.

U.S. satellite imagery detected heat around the jet just before it went down Saturday, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press. The infrared activity could mean many things, including a bomb blast or an engine on the plane exploding due to a malfunction.

Another U.S. official briefed on the Metrojet crash told the AP on Wednesday that intercepted communications played a role in the tentative conclusion that the Islamic State group's Sinai affiliate had planted an explosive device on the flight. The official added that intelligence analysts don't believe the operation was ordered by Islamic State leaders in Raqqa, Syria, but possibly planned and executed by its affiliate in the Sinai.