224 killed as Russian plane crashes in Sinai

CAIRO/ST. PETERSBURG —  A Russian passenger plane with 224 people on board crashed in a mountainous part of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on Saturday, leaving ‘many’ dead including 17 children, according to first reports.

An initial examination of the crash site showed that a Russian passenger plane crashed in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula due to a technical fault, security sources in North Sinai said. None of 224 passengers and crew on board the plane survived, medical and security sources told Reuters.

Search and rescue team members are still gathering the remains of victims, the sources said. About 150 bodies, including burnt corpses, were found in a 5 km (3.1 miles) radius from the crashed aircraft, the sources said. The plane fell vertically, which led to large parts of it burning, the sources added.

The chartered plane had taken off from the south Sinai resort of Sharm El-Sheikh bound for Saint Petersburg and lost contact with air traffic control 23 minutes later before crashing in the restive peninsula.

The head of the Egyptian civil aviation authority Mahmud Al-Zinati told AFP there were “many dead”, including 17 children. The government said in a statement that there were 214 Russian and three Ukranian passengers on board, and that 15 bodies had been recovered and transferred to a morgue so far.

The wreckage was found roughly 100 kms (60 miles) south of the North Sinai town of El-Arish, Egyptian officials said. The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Moscow’s emergency ministry to dispatch rescue teams to Egypt.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and his French counterpart Francois Hollande said they had sent their condolences to Moscow. The Russian Emergency Ministry published a list of names of the passengers, ranging in age from a 10-month-old girl to a 77-year-old woman.

A senior Egyptian aviation official said the plane was a charter flight operated by a Russian firm carrying 217 passengers and seven crew members, which was flying at an altitude of 30,000 feet when communication was lost.

At Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport, anxious family members awaited news of their loved ones. “I am meeting my parents,” said 25-year-old Ella Smirnova, a tall woman seemingly in shock. “I spoke to them last on the phone when they were already on the plane, and then I heard the news.”

“I will keep hoping until the end that they are alive, but perhaps I will never see them again.” A senior official in Egypt air traffic control said that the pilot told him in their last communication that he was having trouble with the plane’s radio system.

Russian aviation official Sergei Izvolsky told Interfax news agency that the plane operated by Russian carrier Kogalymavia had departed Sharm El-Sheikh at 5:51 a.m. local time (0351 GMT). He said the Airbus 321 did not make contact as expected with air traffic controllers in Cyprus.

“Communication was lost today with the Airbus 321 of Kogalymavia which was carrying out flight 9268 from Sharm El-Sheikh to Saint Petersburg,” Izvolsky later told Russian television networks.

“The plane departed Sharm el-Sheikh with 217 passengers and seven crew members. At 7:14 Moscow time the crew was scheduled to make contact with... Larnaca, however this did not happen and the plane disappeared from the radar screens.” The flight was scheduled to land at Saint Petersburg at 0912 GMT, he said.

Kogalymavia, which now operates under the name Metrojet, said on its website it has two A320 planes and seven A321s, and that it transported 779,626 passengers in the first nine months of 2015, according to the Russian aviation agency Rosaviatsia.

Egyptian state television reported that Prime Minister Ismail Sharif was headed to the site of the accident.  The last major commercial airliner crash in Egypt happened in 2004, when a Flash Airlines Boeing 737 plunged into the Red Sea after taking off from Sharm El-Sheikh. The 148 people aboard that flight, most of whom were French, were killed.

The mood in St, Petersburg was somber. Irina Semyonova said her friend Natasha last called her from the Egyptian resort to say she’d bought her a present of perfume from the airport’s duty-free shop. “She was vacationing there with a friend,” Semyonova said blankly, showing a picture on her phone of a smiling swimsuit-clad young woman, her blonde hair in a long plait.

Semyonova was one of a crowd of people gathered in Pulkovo airport in Saint-Petersburg, Russia’s second largest city, who were left reeling after news broke that the plane they had been waiting for had crashed shortly after takeoff. Many of those who came to pick up friends or relatives were in denial as reports trickled about the fate of the 224 people onboard the Airbus 321.

Airport officials tried to keep things calm with a tannoy announcement asking all those waiting to meet those on board the ill-fated Sharm El-Sheikh flight to “come to the information stand.” They were then ushered onto buses and taken to a hotel where psychologists and doctors were waiting. Six ambulances were waiting at the airport. “I don’t understand what is happening,” said 20-year-old Anna, as two emergency workers gently led her away.

Confusion and fear also gripped passengers who had been due to fly out to Egypt on holiday as their plane, operated by Kogalymavia but chartered by a Moscow-based tour operator Brisco, failed to show up. — Agencies