Archive for May 19, 2016

Cartoon of the Day

May 19, 2016

H/t Kingjester’s Blog

hills-are-alive-600-nrd-1

Bob Graham: 9/11 Support Goes To The Top Of Saudi Government

May 19, 2016

Bob Graham: 9/11 Support Goes To The Top Of Saudi Government

by Breitbart News

19 May 2016

Source: Bob Graham: 9/11 Support Goes To The Top Of Saudi Government

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

From Yahoo News:

Is there a smoking gun in the 28 pages that were redacted from the congressional joint inquiry on intelligence from before and after the 9/11 attacks that links the Saudi Arabian government to the attacks? A co-chair of that inquiry, former Forida Sen. Bob Graham thinks there is one. He also says the link goes all the way to the top of the Saudi government and that the government’s funding of terrorist groups continues to this day.

Graham, who has been advocating for the release of those pages for over a decade, sat down with Yahoo News host Stephanie Sy on “Yahoo News Live” to discuss when that might happen, the Senate’s passage of a bill allowing families of 9/11 victims to sue the Saudi government and what he says are the Saudi government’s continued links to terrorism.

On the 28 pages, he said: “I think [they’re] a smoking gun. I think the linkages are so multiple and strong and reinforcing that it’s hard to come away from reading all this material and not feel that there was a support network and that support network came from Saudi Arabia.”

He said it goes beyond the pages though: “They will also open the path to other materials. There are thousands of pages of documents, which speak to the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the 19 hijackers.” He continued, “Could those 19 people have carried out a plot as complex as 9/11 while maintaining anonymity in some cases for more than a year and a half while they were in the United States without having some support?”

As for the bill, which still has to be passed by the House of Representatives and signed by President Obama, he said, “It not only is going to open up the courts of justice to the families and the victims of 9/11. It also has the potential of exposing a tremendous amount of information relative to Saudi Arabia’s involvement in 9/11.” He called the bill “a very big victory.”

After meeting with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Tuesday about the 28 pages, Graham also indicated that the release of those pages could happen soon. He said, “The general has been reviewing these pages closely for a year or more. He told us that before the end of this week, he would probably have his review completed. Then it goes to a panel that’s made up of several agencies [FBI, the Department of State] who will look at the 28 pages for their issues of concern, and then it goes to the president for his determination as to whether to declassify these papers.”

He also told Sy that withholding the documents goes beyond 9/11. He said it could lead to current links between the Saudi government and terrorist groups. He said, “This has been a long time that this information has been withheld from the American people, but there’s also a recognition of the consequences of withholding. Not only the consequences that justice is being denied to the Americans who suffered grievously by 9/11 because they lost a loved one.” He continued, “I think that the Saudis who know what they did and have a pretty good idea that the United States, at least at the highest levels, knows what they did and then nothing’s happened… They’ve interpreted this as being impunity and have continued to fund terrorist organizations and to train the next generation of recruits in their mosques and madrasas.” He said those groups include al-Qaida and ISIS.

Does he consider the withholding of the 28 pages a cover-up? “I have used the term ‘aggressive deception.’”

Read the rest of Alex Bregman’s piece about Bob Graham here.

EgyptAir flight blown up by ISIS time bomb

May 19, 2016

EgyptAir flight blown up by ISIS time Bomb, DEBKAfile,  May 19, 2016

EgyptAir804_480

EgyptAir flight MS804, which took off at 11:09 p.m. on Thursday May 19 from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, was supposed to land at 3:55 a.m. in Cairo. However, it dropped off the radar screens of Greek and Egyptian flight controllers at 2:45 a.m. and crashed into the Mediterranean about 10 miles inside Egypt’s territorial waters.

The Airbus A320-232 had 66 people aboard including seven crew members, three security guards, 30 Egyptian citizens, 17 French nationals as well as citizens of Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other countries. The plane, which was built in 2003, was flown by two pilots who each had thousands of hours of cockpit experience. Reports by Egypt’s airport authority said the cargo did not contain dangerous materials or anything else out of the ordinary.

Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said terrorism could not be ruled out, emphasizing that there were no distress calls made from the cockpit and that there were no reports showing deviation from the flight path or altitude before the plane disappeared. The spokesman of the Egyptian military, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Samir, confirmed in a posting on the military’s Facebook page that the pilots did not send out a distress signal.

Following the disappearance, French President Francois Hollande convened an emergency meeting Thursday morning at the Elysee Palace.

Reports on social media said that witnesses in Greece saw a large ball of fire in the sky, which may strengthen the assumption that flight MS804 carried a time bomb that was set to explode when the plane was in Egyptian airspace.

DEBKAfile’s counterterrorism sources say that if the plane was downed by an act of terror, it would be the latest major blow by ISIS to international civilian aviation, Egyptian tourism, and the security, counterterror and intelligence services of France and Egypt.

  • It is the second time in less than a year that ISIS has succeeded in using a time bomb to down a passenger plane linked to Egypt. The first one was a Russian Airbus A321 that took off from Sharm al-Sheikh and blew up over the Sinai Peninsula on October 31. All 224 passengers and crew were killed.
  • One of the main questions in the investigation of the latest air disaster will be whether the explosive device was planted in Cairo or Paris. If it did happen in Paris, it would raise the question of whether an ISIS cell penetrated the ground crews at Charles de Gaulle airport. If confirmed, it would be a serious escalation by ISIS following the terrorist organization’s November 2015 attacks in Paris in which 130 people were killed and hundreds were wounded.
  • A sign of an escalation was that it was the second terrorist attack within three months on a civilian aviation target in a Western European capital, following the bombing of Brussels international airport in March in which 31 people were killed and about 200 were wounded.
  • But if the investigation finds that the bomb was planted on the plane in Cairo before it departed for Paris, it would mark a serious and dangerous escalation of the infiltration and operational abilities of ISIS in the Egyptian capital, and a major threat to the stability of the regime of President Abel Fattah al-Sisi.

The Glazov Gang- Daniel Greenfield Moment: No Room for Women in Muslim Paradise.

May 19, 2016

The Glazov Gang- Daniel Greenfield Moment: No Room for Women in Muslim Paradise via YouTube, May 18, 2019

(It seems almost like a comedy show, but it isn’t. — DM)

Israel, Gaza and “Proportionality”

May 19, 2016

Israel, Gaza and “Proportionality,” Gatestone InstituteLouis René Beres, May 19, 2016

♦ It appears that several major Palestinian terror groups have begun to prepare for mega-terror attacks on Israel.

♦ The authoritative rules of war do not equate “proportionality” with how many people die in each side of a conflict. In war, no side is ever required to respond to aggression with only the equivalent measure of force. Rather, the obligations of proportionality require that no side employ any level of force that is greater than what is needed to achieve a legitimate political and operational objective.

♦ Under pertinent international law, the use of one’s own people as “human shields” — because such firing from populated areas is intended to deter Israeli reprisals, or to elicit injuries to Palestinian civilians — represents a codified war crime. More specifically, this crime is known as “perfidy.” This is plainly an attempt to make the IDF appear murderous when it is compelled to retaliate, but it is simply a Palestinian manipulation of legal responsibility. Under law, those Arab residents who suffer from Israeli retaliations are incurring the consequences of their own government’s war crimes.

♦ International law is not a suicide pact. Instead, it offers a universally binding body of rules and procedures that allows all states to act on behalf of their “inherent right of self-defense.”

Already, calls from various directions have begun to condemn Israel for its recent retaliatory strikes in self-defense at Gaza.[1] The carefully-rehearsed refrain is all-too familiar. Gazan terrorists fire rockets and mortars at Israel; then, the world calls upon the Israel Air Force (IAF) not to respond.

Although Israel is plainly the victim in these ritualistic cycles of Arab terror and required Israeli retaliations, the “civilized world” usually comes to the defense of the victimizers. Inexplicably, in the European Union, and even sometimes with the current U.S. president, the Israeli response is reflexively, without thought, described as “excessive” or “disproportionate.”

Leaving aside the irony of President Obama’s evident sympathies here — nothing that Israel has done in its own defense even comes close to the indiscriminacy of recent U.S. operations in Afghanistan[2] — the condemnations are always unfounded. Plainly, Hamas and allied Arab terror groups deliberately fire their rockets from populated areas in Gaza at Israeli civilians. Under pertinent international law, this use of one’s own people as “human shields” — because such firing from populated areas is intended to deter Israeli reprisals, or to elicit injuries to Palestinian civilians — represents a codified war crime. More specifically, this crime is known as “perfidy.”

“Perfidy” is plainly an attempt to make the IDF appear murderous when it is compelled to retaliate, but it is always simply a Palestinian manipulation of true legal responsibility. Hamas’s intent might be to incriminate the Israelis as murderers of Gaza’s civilians. Legally, however, the net effect of Arab perfidy in Gaza is to free Israel of all responsibility for Arab harm, even if it is Israeli retaliatory fire that actually injures or kills the Gazan victims. Under law, those Arab residents who suffer from Israeli retaliations are incurring the consequences of their own government’s war crimes. Palestinian suffering, which we are surely about to see again in stepped-up, choreographed Arab propaganda videos, remains the direct result of a relentlessly cruel, insensitive, and criminal Hamas leadership.

Significant, too, although never really mentioned, is that this Hamas leadership, similar to the PA and Fatah leadership, often sits safely away from Gaza, tucked away inconspicuously in Qatar. For these markedly unheroic figures, “martyrdom” is allegedly always welcomed and revered, but only as long as this singular honor is actually conferred upon someone else.

Moreover, the authoritative rules of war do not equate “proportionality” with how many people die in each side of a conflict. In war, no side is ever required to respond to aggression with only the equivalent measure of force. Rather, the obligations of proportionality require that no side employ any level of force that is greater than what is needed to achieve a legitimate political and operational objective.

If the rule of proportionality were genuinely about an equivalent number of dead, America’s use of atomic weapons against Japanese civilians in August 1945 would represent the greatest single expression of “disproportionality” in human history.

It appears that several major Palestinian terror groups have begun to prepare for mega-terror attacks on Israel. Such attacks, possibly in cooperation with certain allied jihadist factions, could include chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. Over time, especially if Iran, undeterred by the July 2015 Vienna Pact, should agree to transfer portions of its residual nuclear materials to terror groups, Israel could then have to face Palestinian-directed nuclear terrorism.

One message is clear. If Israel, pressured by outside forces, allows Palestinian terror from Gaza to continue unopposed, the state could become increasingly vulnerable to even greater forms of Arab aggression.

Also important to keep in mind is that nuclear terror assaults against Israel could be launched from trucks or ships, not only from rockets and missiles.

What about Israel’s active defenses? In its most recent defensive operations, Protective Edge and Pillar of Defense, Israel accomplished an impressively high rate of “Iron Dome” interceptions against incoming rockets from Gaza. Still, it would be a mistake to extrapolate from any such relatively limited successes to the vastly more complex hazards of strategic danger from Iran. Should Iran “go nuclear” in ten years or sooner, that still recalcitrant Islamic regime could launch at Israel missiles armed with nuclear warheads.

746In its most recent defensive operations, Israel accomplished an impressively high rate of “Iron Dome” interceptions against incoming rockets from Gaza. Still, it would be a mistake to extrapolate from any such relatively limited successes to the vastly more complex hazards of strategic danger from Iran. (Image source: IDF)

Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military thinker, already understood — long before the nuclear age — that too great a reliance on defense is always misconceived. Today, Arrow, Israel’s core ballistic missile defense (BMD) interception system, would require a 100% rate success against offensive nuclear missiles. At the same time, such a rate is impossible to achieve, even if enhanced by Rafael’s new laser-based defenses. Israel must therefore continue to rely primarily on deterrence for existential nuclear threats.

Although unacknowledged, Israel has always been willing to keep its essential counterterrorism operations in Gaza consistent with the established rules of humanitarian international law. Palestinian violence, however, has remained in persistent violation of all accepted rules of engagement — even after Israel painfully “disengaged” from Gaza in 2005.

Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority still speak indignantly of “the Occupation?” But where, precisely, is this “occupation?” After all their agitated umbrage about Israeli “disproportionality,” shouldn’t the Palestinians and their allies finally be able to answer that core question? There are no Israelis in Gaza.

International law is not a suicide pact. Instead, it offers a universally binding body of rules and procedures that allows all states to act on behalf of their “inherent right of self-defense.”[3] When terrorists groups such as Hamas openly celebrate the “martyrdom” of Palestinian children, and when Hamas leaders unhesitatingly seek their own religious redemption through the mass-murder of Jewish children, unfortunately these terrorists retain no legal right to demand sanctuary.

In response to endless terror attacks from Gaza, Israel, with countless leaflets, phone calls, “knocks on the roof,” and other warnings to its attackers, has been acting with an operational restraint unequaled by any other nation and according to binding rules of war. In these obligatory acts of self-defense there has not yet been the slightest evidence of disproportionality.

____________________________________

[1] Speaking in Beirut on Channel 10 News, on May 7, 2016, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah accused Israel of “attacking Gaza,” continuing: “Unfortunately, the Arab world is silent about the situation in Gaza. … these actions must be condemned.” Cited in Israel National News, “Nasrallah calls for condemnation of Israeli ‘Attacks’ on Gaza,” May 7, 2016. Interesting, too, is that Nasrallah, a Shiite leader, is speaking here in strong support of Sunni Hamas.

[2] See Alissa J. Rubin, “Airstrike Hits Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Afghanistan,” The New York Times, October 3, 2015. This is an account of the October 2015, U.S. destruction of a crowded hospital in the embattled city of Kunduz. The Pentagon confirmed the strike, which it called “collateral damage,” and President Obama offered condolences to the victims in what he termed a “tragic incident.” Doctors Without Borders was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.

[3] See, especially, Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

Syrian Opposition Official: West Responsible For Assad Remaining In Power; U.S. Enabled Russia To Become Main Player In Syria Crisis

May 19, 2016

Syrian Opposition Official: West Responsible For Assad Remaining In Power; U.S. Enabled Russia To Become Main Player In Syria Crisis, MEMRI, May 18, 2016

Khaled Khoja, who served as president of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces until March 2016, gave an interview to the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat on April 17, 2016, in which he harshly attacked the international community and particularly the U.S. Khoja argued that the U.S. never desired regime change in Syria and therefore did not take a decisive stand against Bashar Al-Assad despite his many crimes, and did not significantly support the Syrian opposition. According to him, the Americans showed apathy regarding the crisis, enabling Russia to fill the vacuum that they had created in a way that suited Russian interests. He added that the purpose of American military aid to the Kurds was to create a Kurdish canton, which would effectively lead to the splintering of Syria. Khoja stressed that the Syrian High Negotiations Committee remains insistent that the first step is to establish a transitional governing body, and only then can a new constitution, elections, and other topics be addressed.

It should be mentioned that the interview was given prior to the April 19 announcement by the head of the Syrian High Negotiations Committee, Riyad Hijab, that its delegation was suspending its participation in the Geneva talks.

Following are excerpts from the interview:[1]

28054Khaled Khoja (image: Zamanalwsl.net)

We Insist On A Serious Transition Of Power And All Authority

Khoja started by mentioning the Syrian High Negotiations Committee’s expectations from the current round of the Geneva talks: “We are here to focus on forming the governing body for the transitional phase. U.S. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura is continuing his relentless efforts to begin discussing the political transitional phase, which will be based on establishing the ‘governing body,’ as stated in the Geneva announcement, UN Security Council Resolution 2218, and other resolutions. We have been empowered by opposition forces to discuss realizing these goals and we cannot deviate from them. Negotiations today should pick up where Geneva II left off [in February 2014] under the supervision of [former UN Special Envoy to Syria] Lakhdar Brahimi. We must start by forming this [governing] body and then proceeding to discuss the issues of the constitution, the elections, and other matters that fall under the governing body’s authority. Naturally, we have clear views on all these issues, which we will reveal at the appropriate time. I wish to say that we reject the verbal slips replacing the phrase ‘transitional governing body’ with ‘transitional regime’ or ‘transitional government’ and adhere to ‘transitional phase governing body’ and all it implies – meaning a serious transition of power and all authority.”

International And American Support For The Opposition Is Feeble

According to Khoja, “the position of international, and especially American, support for the Syrian opposition is feeble. The sad thing is that the true positions [of the U.S. and international community] regarding Assad is still feeble and vague despite all the evidence marking Bashar Al-Assad as a ‘war criminal,’ and despite the many official American statements that hold him responsible for ongoing killing and acts of slaughter. The lack of international political desire to push for the start of the transitional political phase in Syria has provided Assad and the parties supporting him, whether Iranians or Russians, with room to maneuver, enabling him [Assad] to continue heading the regime and to remain a chaos-creating factor in the region, [a factor] which exacerbates the refugee crisis and uses it as a card for pressuring neighboring countries and Europe, and which exports ISIS and terrorism…”

U.S. Apathy Is A Main Factor In Russia Becoming The Main Player In The Crisis

Khoja said further: “There is clearly American apathy regarding the Middle East, which opens the door for Russia to fill the vacuum left by the Americans… When we speak of the mass extermination of the Syrian people, their expulsion, the use of chemical weapons against them, the documentation of regime crimes in detention centers, forced disappearances, preplanned acts of murder, and red lines that have become green lights – all this causes observers to lose faith in the American position… Had the Americans not created this vacuum, we would not have been in the state we are in today, and Russia would not have become the main player in the crisis, holding the reins of initiative… Politically speaking, I believe the American position has not changed much since the onset of the Syrian revolution… [From the start] there was no real American support for change… The military aid we received [from the U.S.] is no match for the [American] military aid received by the Kurdish [Democratic] Union Party and the Kurdish People’s Defense Unit militias [YPG]. We believe that this aid for the Kurds was meant to create a new Kurdish ‘canton’ and to enforce a new reality as a foregone conclusion. American apathy has turned Syria into a series of ‘cantons’. The ‘Southern Canton,’ which is apart from the ‘Northern Canton,’ the ‘Kurdish Canton,’ and the ‘Alawi Canton.’ We cannot discount the possibility that as part of the political process, we will see a strengthening of [the phenomenon] of these cantons, but we will absolutely not agree to this…”

Syria Cannot Remain A Group Of Cantons In The Medium And Long Term

Khoja said that during the second round of negotiations there was talk of a federal solution that was “marketed by the Americans, the Russians, and UN Special Envoy de Mistura, who spoke openly and explicitly in one press conference on the topic of federation. Except that he did not discuss this issue with us, but rather only with other parties. The Russians did not hide their support for the federal solution and in my opinion, there is a serious attempt to create facts on the ground in Syria in order to strengthen the ‘canton’ situation.

“Any international solution, regardless of which parties promote it, cannot impose a situation that the Syrian people do not agree to. It is possible that the current situation will continue in the near future, but not in the medium and long term. The proof of this is that in the 1920s, the French tried to establish four statelets in Syria, but they only lasted a few years.”

 

Endnotes:

 

[1] Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), April 17, 2016.

Robert Spencer on CAIR’s opposition to counter-terror efforts

May 19, 2016

Robert Spencer on CAIR’s opposition to counter-terror efforts, Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer, May 17, 2016

French intelligence warned of ISIS attacks before missing Egypt Air Flight MS804

May 19, 2016

French intelligence warned the country was ‘clearly being targeted by ISIS’ and was at risk of ‘a new form of attack’ a week before Paris flight to Egypt.

Patrick Calvar, head of DGSI, warned of ‘new attacks’ on May

10 His warning to French MPs came a week before Flight MS804 went missing

Mr Calvar said ISIS and Al-Qaeda wanted to create a ‘climate of panic’

France will be hosting the Euro 2016 football tournament next month

By Chris Summers For Mailonline

Published: 02:51 EST, 19 May 2016 | Updated: 04:15 EST, 19 May 2016

Source: French intelligence warned of ISIS attacks before missing EgyptAir Flight MS804 | Daily Mail Online

The head of France’s internal intelligence agency had warned the country was being ‘clearly targeted’ by ISIS a week before the Paris to Cairo flight took off.

Egypt Air Flight MS804 has gone missing over the Mediterranean with 66 people on board amid reports of a merchant ship captain having seen a ‘flame in the sky’.

An Egyptian civil aviation authority spokesman has said the plane, with 15 French passengers and one Briton on board – most likely crashed into the sea.

Patrick Calvar (pictured), the head of French internal intelligence, warned last week that ISIS was planning new attacks and France was still their number one target

The cause of the disaster remains unknown but it comes seven months after a bomb blew up a Russian airliner over the Sinai desert, killing all 224 people on board.

ISIS later revealed images of a soda can bomb which they claimed to have used to bring the Metrojet plane down.

It has now emerged that Patrick Calvar, the head of France’s DGSI agency, told a parliamentary committee on national defence in Paris on May 10 that ISIS was planning ‘a new form of attack’.

France’s security forces have remained on high alert since the Paris attacks (pictured) in November, which killed 130 people

The DGSI (General Directorate for Internal Security) is France's equivalent of the MI5 and is responsible for guarding against internal threats

The DGSI (General Directorate for Internal Security) is France’s equivalent of the MI5 and is responsible for guarding against internal threats

France was targeted twice last year – with the Charlie Hebdo attack in January and the Paris attacks in November – and the French security forces are on a state of high alert.

Mr Calvar was quoted in The Local as saying: ‘We risk being confronted with a new form of attack: a terrorist campaign characterised by leaving explosive devices in places where big crowds gather, multiplying this type of action to create a climate of panic.’

He made no mention of attacks on aircraft but said he believed France was ‘the country most threatened’ by ISIS, which is often known as Daesh, and also warned that Al-Qaeda remained a threat and was champing at the bit to ‘restore its image’ as a major player, especially in the Maghreb and the Arabian peninsula.

Mr Calvar said while last November’s attacks in Paris that killed 130 people were conducted by suicide bombers and jihadists armed with Kalashnikovs, a new form of attack was possible.

We know that Daesh is planning new attacks…and that France is clearly targeted
Patrick Calvar

It may be several weeks or even months before it is known what brought down Flight MS804 but Mr Calvar’s comments will increase fears of spectators with less than a month to go before the start of the Euro 2016 football tournament in France.

Mr Calvar said: ‘We know that Daesh is planning new attacks using fighters in the area, taking routes which facilitate access to our territory and that France is clearly targeted.’

He said ISIS had suffered military setbacks in Syria and Iraq and wanted to take revenge on members of the coalition, including France, which were behind the air strikes on ISIS targets.

Mr Calvar said while last November’s attacks in Paris that killed 130 people were conducted by suicide bombers and jihadists armed with Kalashnikovs, a new form of attack was possible.

This is a so-called soda can bomb, published in the ISIS magazine, which they claimed to have used to destroy the Russian airliner in October, killing 224 people

PM: Terror Attack ‘Not Ruled Out’ in Egypt Air Disaster

May 19, 2016

PM: Terror Attack ‘Not Ruled Out’ in Egypt Air Disaster

by Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.

19 May 2016

Source: PM: Terror Attack ‘Not Ruled Out’ in Egypt Air Disaster

An EgyptAir flight carrying 66 people from Paris to Cairo went down into the Mediterranean Sea during the night in a mysterious crash that the Egyptian Prime Minister says may have been due to a terrorist attack.

No possibilities, including that of a terrorist attack, can be ruled out, according to Prime Minister Sherif Ismail, who stated that as yet very little information is available.

Sources from EgyptAir reported that at 2:26am, shortly before its disappearance from radar, the aircraft sent out an SOS signal, whereas another emergency signal was picked up two hours later at 4:26am. This later signal, according to the company, could have been sent by the automated location devices installed on the aircraft.

The captain of a mercantile ship claims to have witnessed flames on the sky during the night some 150 miles south of the Greek Island of Karpathos. His testimony led to the discovery of the plane’s wreckage in the area he described, just ten miles inside Egyptian territorial waters.

Flight MS804 left Charles de Gaulle airport at 11:09pm yesterday and disappeared from radar at 2:45am, just as it entered Egyptian airspace. The aircraft, an Airbus A320, was carrying 56 passengers, three security personnel and seven crew members. The majority of the passengers were Egyptians, as well as 15 French, a British, a Belgian, two Iraqis, a Kuwaiti, a Saudi, a Sudanese, a Portuguese, an Algerian, a Canadian and a citizen of Chad.

Experts have ruled out the use of portable surface-to-air missiles noting that the Airbus was out of the range of these weapons.

A possible scenario being advanced is that of a suicide bomber who could have placed a small explosive devise near one of the plane’s windows. The explosion at that altitude would cause a rapid decompression and easily result in the destruction of the aircraft.

Jean-Paul Troadec, former president of the French air accident investigation bureau (BEA), said there is “a strong possibility of an explosion on board from a bomb or a suicide bomber. The idea of a technical accident when weather conditions were good, seems also possible but not that likely.”

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that at this moment “no hypothesis” is excluded as to the possible causes of the crash.

French President, Francois Hollande, spoke Thursday morning by phone with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi, and the two reportedly agreed on a “close cooperation” to ascertain the circumstances of the disaster.