EGYPT: Security At Sharm El Sheikh Airport Was Lax, Was Bomb Planted At A Hotel?

Egyptian soldiers stand guard outside the entrance to Sharm airport.

Was jet bomb planted at a HOTEL? Staff quizzed over fears device was placed in luggage in passenger's room before being smuggled through Sharm airport

Egyptian investigators widen enquiries to hotels in Sharm el-Sheikh resort
They fears bomb was squirelled in baggage while passenger's hotel room
Hotels also provide food to some flights and deliver it directly to the planes
British spies heard chatter suggesting bomb was smuggled in hold of jet

U.S. and British officials have reportedly said that they are 99.9 per cent sure that a noise picked up by the cockpit voice recorder in the final seconds of the Metrojet flight en route from Sharm el Sheikh to St Petersburg, Russia was the sound of a explosion

Hotel workers are being questioned in Sharm el-Sheikh amid fears the bomb suspected of downing the Russian jet was planted in luggage in a passenger's room.

Egyptian investigators have widened the scope of their enquiries after British spies intercepted intelligence that suggested explosives were smuggled into the hold of the doomed plane.

Airport staff, ground crew and air traffic controllers have already faced interrogation as it looks increasingly likely the bombers had help from an insider at the airport.

Baggage handlers with links to ISIS were immediately placed under suspicion because they could have used their high-level security clearance to wave an explosive device through pre-flight checks.

Another theory now being pursued appears to focus on the possibility that a bomb could have been planted in luggage in a tourist's hotel room.

Hotel workers are being questioned in Sharm el-Sheikh amid fears the bomb suspected of downing the Russian jet was planted in luggage in a passenger's room.

Local hotels provide food to some flights and deliver the food directly to the planes, officials said.

Authorities have begun questioning hotel staff, including cleaners and support staff, to establish how the device could have been squirrelled onto the aircraft, it was reported by the Daily Telegraph.

Egyptian authorities have already started questioning airport staff and ground crew who worked on the Russian flight and placed some employees under surveillance, according to security officials.

The officials from Sharm el-Sheikh airport said security checks were often lax at a gate into the facility used to bring in food and fuel.

Guards at the gate often let such deliveries go in without full searches because they know the delivery men, the officials said.

Staff in a diligent mood are often bribed with a meal or two to pass the lorries unsearched to save time, they added.

'You are not going to search your friend or your friend's friend,' one official said. 'It's rude.'

A retired senior official from Egypt's Tourism Ministry, Magdy Salim, said airport guards regularly skipped security checks for friends and co-workers and often did not search people 'out of respect to save their time if they look chic or if they come out of a fancy car'.

'Airport security procedures in Egypt are almost all bad' and marred by 'insufficiencies,' Mr Salim said.

Earlier, the head of the joint investigation team, Ayman el-Muqadem, said a noise was heard in the last second of the cockpit voice recording before the plane plummeted. The announcement bolstered U.S. and British suspicions it was brought down by a bomb.

However, Mr el-Muqadem warned it was too early to say what caused the plane to apparently break up in mid-flight, adding that analysis of the noise was under way.

It was also reported over the weekend that a CCTV monitoring station at Sharm el Sheikh airport was abandoned more than half the time, raising yet more questions about the shockingly slack security regime believed to have let an ISIS bomb onto a plane.

Workers at the airport in the terror-stricken Sinai region of Egypt said that cameras overlooking baggage handlers were unmonitored around half the time - and that camera networks throughout the airport are broken.

Staff said it was '50-50' whether somebody was in place at the camera station, where a security official was supposed to be staying alert for suspicious activity.

The revelation is the latest in a string of shocking lapses at the airport, which include claims of security staff playing Candy Crush on their phone instead of watching X-ray machines and allowing passengers to skip security completely for £15 bribes.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the staff said that 'it happens sometimes that no-one is there' at the vital stage in airport security.

They added that 'there are a lot of broken cameras' throughout the airport.