RUSSIAN security inspectors flew to Egypt yesterday as questions continued to be raised over anti-terrorist measures at Sharm el-Sheikh airport.

The first of three Russian teams was dispatched as mourners packed into St Isaac’s Cathedral in St Petersburg for a memorial service for the victims.

Russian authorities did not give details on what specific security issues the inspections teams would be examining.

British Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond said that if it was confirmed that last weekend’s plane crash in Sinai was caused by a bomb, airport security in many cities would need to be overhauled.

Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sissi has said a British security team sent to evaluate the airport early this year ago was satisfied with the results.

But unnamed security officials at Sharm el-Sheikh airport, where the doomed Russian airliner took off, told the Associated Press that security was lacking in many areas.

Several said a faulty baggage scanner had been noted in security reports to bosses but that the machine had not been replaced.

One alleged bribe-taking by poorly-paid policemen monitoring X-ray machines.

Egyptian Aviation Ministry spokesman Mohamed Rahma dismissed the claims, saying: “Sharm el-Sheikh is one of the safest airports in the world.”

On Saturday, international crash-investigation team head Ayman el-Muqadem said that a noise could be heard in the last second of the doomed plane’s cockpit voice recording, furthering speculation that the flight was brought down by a bomb.

But Mr Muqadem said that the recording was being analysed and stressed that all possibilities were still being considered.

“It could be lithium batteries in the luggage of one of the passengers, it could be an explosion in the fuel tank, it could be fatigue in the body of the aircraft, it could be the explosion of something,” he said.

The cockpit voice recorder is one of the two so-called black boxes fitted to airliners, the other being the flight data recorder.

On Saturday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry accused Western governments of failing to heed Cairo’s calls for aid in its struggle against terrorism.

“European countries did not give us the co-operation we are hoping for,” he said.
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