ISIS Celebrates Killing of 224 Civilians in Russian Plane Crash Video
The Islamic State terrorist organization has released a video showing militants celebrating the crash of the Russian Metrojet that killed 224 people in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt.
The militant group, which controls large swaths of territory in Iraq, Syria and parts of the Sinai Peninsula, released a 7-minute video over the weekend called "Satisfaction of souls by killing of Russians."
The video, which The Independent reports was posted to Archive.org Friday night by the media wing of IS' Aleppo province in Syria, claims that IS' Egyptian affiliate, known as Wilayat Sinai, was the terrorist outfit behind the atrocious bombing of Russian Airbus A321.
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The video reiterates the claim that the bombing of the plane, which took off from the Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport on the morning of Oct. 31 and later crashed in the northern part of the peninsula, was retaliation for Russian airstrikes in Syria.
The footage opens by showing bombed out buildings in Syria, which IS' militants say were destroyed by Russian airstrikes. The video also makes the claim that the Russian airstrikes took the lives of many innocent civilians.
"By God's will, and strong efforts of our brothers and soldiers on the ground in the province of Sinai, they brought down a Russian airplane, which carried over 220 Crusader Russians," The Daily Mail quotes an Arabic narrator in the video. "All of them have been killed, and thanks to God for that."
The video also records testimony from an alleged witness of the Russian airstrikes who described the damage caused by their jets.
"By God's will, we will not let you live in peace until we live in peace," the witness said, as he stood in front of the rubble. "We will attack you at your own places, and we will not make any difference between old and young.
"So die in your rage, we are the ones who brought it [the plane] down, but we will not let you know how we did it. We will declare our methods on how we brought it down at the time and place of our choice."
Investigators in Egypt are "90 percent certain" that a noise heard on a cockpit recording from the flight was the sound of an explosion.
"The indications and analysis so far of the sound on the black box indicate it was a bomb," a member of the investigation told Reuters.
As U.S. officials believe that jihadis had the help of an inside source at the airport, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told ABC News that electronic intercepts before and after the crash suggest that IS was communicating with someone at the airport.
"ISIS may have concluded that the best way to defeat airport defenses is not to go through them but to go around them with the help of somebody on the inside," Schiff, who has received classified briefings on the investigation, told ABC News on Sunday.
IS' video comes after the group released written and audio statements from Wilayat Sinai claiming responsibility. Another audio message released before the video promised to "soon" reveal how the group destroyed the plane.
"All the intelligence officials I have spoken to point to Wilayat Sinai being responsible for the attack," Thomas Joscelyn, a U.S. security analyst who was briefed by intelligence officials, told The Daily Mail. "The reason why they are not saying how they did it may be because they are trying to protect a mole at the airport."
