The Russian government is offering a $50 million reward to anyone who helps it detain those responsible for placing a bomb on a Russian passenger jet which broke up over Egypt last month, killing 224 people, the TASS news agency reported.

News of the reward came after the Kremlin said for the first time that a bomb had ripped apart the plane and promised to hunt down those responsible and intensify its air strikes on Islamist militants in Syria in response. 

"One can unequivocally say that it was a terrorist act," Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia's FSB security service, told a meeting chaired by President Vladimir Putin, according to a transcript published on the Kremlin's web site.  

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