CAIRO — The Islamic State terrorist group Wednesday released a photo of a bomb hidden in a soft drink can that it said had brought down a Russian passenger jet over Egypt last month, and it also announced it had killed hostages from Norway and China.
The disclosure of the new violence by the terrorists came as Russian and French warplanes continued their intensified airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria. The attacks on civilians in Paris on Friday and aboard the Russian jetliner have galvanized international determination to confront the terrorists.
The photo, which has not been corroborated, was released by the group’s English-language online magazine. It showed a can of Schweppes Gold, a soft drink sold in Egypt, and what appeared to be other bomb components next to it.
The Metrojet Airbus 321-200 crashed in the Sinai Desert shortly after taking off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for St. Petersburg. All 224 people aboard, mostly Russian tourists, were killed.
In the magazine, the group, without providing details, said it “discovered a way to compromise the security at the Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport.”
It said it initially planned to bring down a plane from one of the countries taking part in the U.S.-led coalition’s air campaign against Islamic State terrorists in Syria and Iraq but changed the target to a Russian jetliner after Moscow began its airstrikes in Syria in September.
The terrorists, who have a powerful affiliate in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, previously claimed to have downed the jetliner but did not give out details of how the attack was carried out.
The terrorist group also released a photo of what it said were passports belonging to dead passengers from the Metrojet flight.
Russia’s FSB security service Tuesday said the Metrojet flight had crashed as a result of “a terrorist act” — a bomb containing the equivalent of 2.2 pounds of TNT that exploded aboard the jet, causing it to break apart in the air. Egyptian authorities have not said what caused the crash, saying an investigation is still underway.
Bob Ayers, a former CIA officer and an international security analyst, said it would be “easy” to bring down a commercial airliner with a device hidden in a soda can.
“To bring down an airplane, you don’t need to blow it apart, you just need enough to rupture the pressure hull of the aircraft, and the air pressure will do the work for you,” he said. A can with a device inside could “blow a really nice hole” in an airplane, he said.
The terrorist group’s magazine also announced the killing of hostages from Norway and China who had appeared in an earlier issue wearing yellow jumpsuits. It said they had been killed “after being abandoned by kafir (infidel) nations and organizations.” In the images, the men appeared to have been shot to death.
The Norwegian has been identified as Ole Johan Grimsgaard-Ofstad, 48, a graduate student in political philosophy from Porsgrunn, south of Oslo. The Chinese man had been identified as Fan Jinghui, 50, a self-described “wanderer” from Beijing who once taught middle school.
The terrorists did not say when or where the two were captured when announcing their captivity in a previous issue of the magazine. However, the last post on Grimsgaard-Ofstad’s Facebook page, dated Jan. 24, said he had arrived in Idlib, Syria, on his way to Hama.
Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg told a news conference that the government cannot confirm the killing, but added: “We have no reasons to doubt it.”
