The crashed Russian jet: Forensic teams to find the real cause

(Reuters) – With world powers divided over the cause of a Russian jetliner crash, much rests on forensic teams as they scour a sandy trail of wreckage almost a week after 224 people died in Egypt’s worst air disaster.

Britain said on Thursday it believed Islamic State may have downed the jet, but Egypt said there was no evidence of a bomb and Russia said it was too early to draw conclusions.

That puts the onus on Egyptian-led investigators to prove or disprove the theory, with only scattered evidence and Egypt’s tourist economy at stake.

Clues that might reveal whether the plane was deliberately brought down are flung across 10 miles of desert or potentially concealed in the dying microseconds of cockpit recordings.

With at least one of the black boxes reported to be damaged, and cockpit sensors likely to be silenced by any blast, the main focus will be on understanding the wreckage as well as any evidence gleaned from bodies of the mainly Russian victims.

To tackle their task an international team including Russia, France and Ireland is likely to draw on lessons from one of the bloodiest 12 months in aviation over a quarter of a century ago.

In December 1988, 270 people were killed when a bomb brought down Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.

In September the following year, a DC-10 flown by French airline UTA blew up over the Sahara en route from the Chadian capital N’djamena to Paris, killing all 170 on board.

In both cases, investigators concluded that a device may have been smuggled aboard but drew a blank from ‘black box’ recorders whose power supply was severed by the explosions.