Moscow cast doubt Saturday on claims by the Islamic State group’s Egyptian affiliate to have downed a Russian passenger jet that crashed in the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people onboard.
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In order to determine the exact cause of the crash, a team led by the Russian transport minister arrived in Cairo Sunday.
Egypt’s civil aviation ministry said the plane’s wreckage was found in the Hassana area a few 70km south of the city of el-Arish.
No survivors have been found on the crash site in Sinai, near Housna, a 300-kilometer town away from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. where Russian Airline plane has been found burning on the ground. “Sinai State”, a Sinai-based militant group loyal to the IS, has claimed responsibility for the crash, which is refuted by both Egyptian and Russian sides.
Stricken relatives of passengers aboard the Airbus A321 at the worldwide airport in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Saturday.
Saturday’s crash is expected to put more pressures on Egypt’s tourism industry, which has been hammered by four years of political unrest since a 2011 uprising unseated autocrat Hosni Mubarak. The plane was to contact air traffic control in Turkish CyprusÂ’ Larnaca after leaving Egypt’s airspace, but failed to do so.
Accidents at cruising altitude are one of the rarest categories of accidents but also among the most deadly, accounting for 13 percent of fatal accidents but 27 percent of fatalities since 2005, according to Boeing.
The Irish-owned aircraft was leased by a Russian airline.
Investigators are at the crash site trying to piece together what could have happened.
According to state news agency MENA, Sinai State Prosecutor Emad Eddin Mansour said authorities located the plane’s black box among the debris.
“We maintain working contacts with all air traffic controllers”.
The plane came down in an area that has witnessed fierce fighting between Egyptian soldiers and Islamist insurgents.
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Everyone on the plane was Russian except for a few Ukrainian passengers, Egypt’s airport authority said in a statement. Al Arabiya TV channel said citing Egyptian security services that the airliner was completely destroyed.
