British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Thursday it was increasingly likely that a bomb brought down a Russian airliner over Egypt with the loss of 224 lives, as US President Barack Obama said he was taking the possibility "very seriously". "We cannot be certain that the Russian airliner was brought down by a terrorist bomb, but it looks increasingly likely that was the case," Cameron said, during a strained visit by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to London. Obama echoed Cameron's remarks later on Thursday when he told a Seattle radio station that the US is taking "very seriously" the possibility that a bomb caused the plane to crash in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said earlier that the US can't rule out the possibility of terrorism in the Metrojet crash. A Sinai-based group affiliated to the so-called Islamic State (IS), the militant group that has seized swathes of Iraq and Syria, has claimed responsibility for the crash, which if confirmed would make it the first attack on civil aviation by the world's most violent jihadist organisation. But Moscow, which launched airstrikes against Islamist fighters including the IS group in Syria more than a month ago, says it is premature to reach conclusions that the flight was attacked. In a telephone call, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Cameron it was important that assessments of the cause of the crash be based on information from the official investigation, Interfax news agency reported. Suspended flights Britain, Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands suspended flights this week to and from Sharm al-Sheikh in response to the crash, a decision which Egypt has called unjustified. Both Cameron and Sisi were keen to downplay any strains between the UK and Egypt at a joint news conference in London on Thursday. "We are working intensively together in the spirit of close cooperation and I'm immensely grateful for all the efforts the Egyptian authorities have made so far," Cameron told reporters. Sisi, who had a working lunch with Cameron during his visit, said Cairo had been asked 10 months ago to check security at the airport "We understood their concern because they are really interested in the safety and security of their nationals," he said. A spokesperson for Cameron's office later said flights from the resort destination to the UK would resume on Friday. Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, said Russian planes were continuing to fly to and from Sharm al‐Sheikh.
