Potential Bomb Planted on Russian Passenger Plane by ISIS Affiliate

A Russian passenger plane was headed from the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, Russia, on October 31st 2015.  Soon after take-off, tragedy would strike and it would disintegrate midair and crash into the Sinai Peninsula.

ISIS affiliate Al Wilayat Sinai has claimed responsibility for the crash of Metrojet Flight 9268 over Egypt which killed 224 people.  Despite this large claim, no one seems to know much about this group/organization.  First and foremost, it is important to distinguish the difference from the ISIS that we know and see in the news.  The terrorist organization ISIS currently occupies large parts of Iraq and Syria and has been reigning terror on these populations since its formation.  On the other hand, ISIS in Sinai is "mostly a local group of jihadists that feed off of long-standing grievances that the population of the Sinai peninsula has with the Egyptian state (CNN)."

Pledging allegiance to ISIS's main group, the local faction in the Sinai operates autonomously and has strengthened this argument with their claim of this attack on the Metrojet flight.  Keeping this in mind, U.S. officials are "99.9 percent certain" that there was a bomb on the Metrojet flight.  If this is in fact true, and Al Wilayat Sinai did bomb the Russian airliner, "it could indicate that the terror group is far more dangerous than previously believed (CNN)."

British and U.S. intelligence agencies are working on determining whether or not a planted bomb by this organization was planted but considering ISIS' past of publicizing its acts for propaganda it isn't a far leap to attribute this crash to an affiliate of their organization.  If these claims were to be proven true, the situation surrounding ISIS would certainly become more complex, especially when taking into account Russia's role in the conflict.