ISIS Now Blowing Commercial Planes Out Of the Sky

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

If you���re a citizen who has all along taken the threat from ISIS seriously, you���re one of the smart ones. Although some among us have not thought of ISIS in terms of being the kind of group that would explode bombs on commercial passenger planes, we should all think that way now. According to U.S. officials, Metrojet Flight 9268, which crashed in the Egyptian desert on Saturday, was blown up by ISIS terrorists who managed to smuggle some type of explosive device aboard. The plane, which had taken off from Egypt���s Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport minutes before, en route to St. Petersburg, Russia, disintegrated above the Sinai Peninsula. There were no survivors among the 224 passengers aboard.

Intelligence analysts have found veracity in the claims of ISIS militants, made since the incident, that the attack on the Metrojet aircraft was payback for Russian air strikes against ISIS in Syria. According to one unidentified U.S. official, Sharm el-Sheikh is known for having poor security to begin with, and it further appears that ISIS operatives may have had some assistance from someone on the ���inside��� who works at or is otherwise associated with the airport.

Although other nations immediately grounded flights originating from Sharm el-Sheikh, the U.S. has not had to do so because there are no U.S. airlines that service the area. Nevertheless, any U.S. citizen who is traveling anywhere now, particularly internationally, should pay close attention to what appears to be ISIS���s move ���up��� to this kind of terrorism, because it does not appear they are going away anytime soon.