“Russia’s emergencies ministry has sent more than 100 workers to Egypt to help recover bodies and examine evidence”.
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The flight with 217 passengers and seven crew had taken off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in south Sinai bound for Saint Petersburg. The victims were all Russians except for four Ukrainians and one person from Belarus.
The Airbus A321 had a routine check before flight, showing everything was OK to proceed, Mahjoob said.
They were expected to begin arriving in St Petersburg late on Sunday or early on Monday. Vladimir Povarov, 19, brought flowers with a friend, saying “we couldn’t remain indifferent”.
The Middle East’s biggest carrier, Emirates, has also suspended flights, however British Airways has said it will continue flying over Sinai.
“Now in various media there is assorted information that the Russian passenger (plane)… was supposedly shot down by an anti-aircraft missile, fired by terrorists”, Russia’s Minister of Transport Maxim Sokolov told the Interfax news agency Saturday.
Netanyahu says “this was a great disaster”.
UNWTO conveyed its heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the victims as well as to the Russian people on behalf of the global tourism community.
As the Russian investigators moved slowly across the site, Egyptian military helicopters buzzed overhead, combing the wider area for debris – or bodies – not yet found.
Egyptian officials have said a few bodies had been recovered within a radius of 5km, but that of a three-year-old girl was found 8km from the site. The Metrojet crashed in an area where Egyptian forces have been battling an Islamic insurgency. Most victims were Russians.
An official day of mourning is underway in Russia following the crash of a Russian airliner on Saturday in the Egyptian Sinai.
The widow, Natalya Trukhacheva, told Russian TV her husband complained “that the technical condition of the aircraft left much to be desired”, according to The Guardian.
The head of the Interstate Aviation Committee, Viktor Sorochenko, said that the Airbus A321 that crashed in Egypt yesterday, on October 31st, fell apart in mid-air.
Russia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, launched air raids against opposition groups in Syria including Islamic State on September 30. All 224 people on board died.
According to FlightRadar24, a Sweden-based flight tracking service, the aircraft was descending rapidly at about 6,000 feet per minute before it disappeared from radar.
Russian and French investigators have joined the Egyptian-led probe into one of the deadliest Airbus incidents of the past decade, along with experts from the aviation giant, which is headquartered in France.
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Three airlines – Emirates, Air France and Lufthansa – have decided not to fly over the Sinai Peninsula until a determination is made as to how the plane crashed, the BBC reported.
